What is ArtBomb?
ArtBomb is a multi-purpose space for emerging artists, residencies, creative start-ups and home to Doncaster’s experimental arts festival of the same name. Situated around Doncaster’s hidden architectural and cultural jewel, the Unitarian Church on Hallgate, ArtBomb aims to spark discussion, challenge ideas and foster a new sense of curiosity.
“ArtBomb brings a vital spark to Doncaster's burgeoning culture calendar and this year's theme is one that encourages our communities to engage with the ecological future of Doncaster region in a highly creative and fun platform involving local artists and communities as well as those from further afield. I look forward to experiencing it in August."
CIlr Nigel Ball, Portfolio Holder for Public Health, Leisure & Planning
“I Welcome ArtBomb's innovative and creative focus on what could be done to help us all be more proactive in developing Doncaster's ecological agenda. We know we are in a race against time and the more we can do to drive debate and share best practice the stronger and more resilient our communities can be in the future."
Ros Jones CBE, Mayor of Doncaster
NEW Residency
In Translation is a new exhibition by London-based artist Matthew Humphreys; exploring memory, family and the fragile ways we communicate and remember across time.
The exhibition brings together five new works created from fragments of the artist’s personal archive – home videos, drawings and photographs more than twenty years old. Through film, installation and collaborative works with local students, Humphreys translates these fleeting moments into artworks that quietly explore care, loss and the ways memories are shaped by both technology and human touch.
Central to the exhibition are the artist’s parents, Mervyn and Betty. In the film Tendresse (2026), they appear in intimate family footage, while Sweep (2026) retraces the artist’s father’s working life inside a factory where he once worked. Other works extend these personal stories into the public realm: bird boxes built with Doncaster Deaf Trust students are installed on the building, while a walk-in camera obscura invites visitors to experience the street outside in a new way.
Humphreys, a Child of Deaf Adults (CODA), often explores communication beyond spoken language. In Translation invites audiences to slow down and experience memory through gesture, touch and image.
Everyone is welcome to attend the launch event on Friday 20 March, 5–7pm.
ArtBomb Festival 2025: A Meaningful Use of Time
Come for the art...
Stay for the conversations.
Make time for what matters!
Art / Ecology / Labour / Hope
ArtBomb is Doncaster’s festival of experimental art, urgent ideas and collective imagination.
Taking over shops, streets and unexpected spaces, ArtBomb 2025 brings together artists, performers, thought leaders, communities and dreamers to explore how we live, and how we might live better. This year’s theme, A Meaningful Use of Time, invites audiences to slow down and tune in.
Through powerful installations, residencies, performances and provocations, we’re thinking with water, listening to plants, challenging stigma, and celebrating survival. From deep listening sculpture, performance interventions, experiments with peat, a cybernetic shop, a mini-concert in a square, electronic music improvisations and films exploring community and climate, this is art that’s grounded, generous and full of fight.
Part social experiment, part celebration — ArtBomb is a space for connection, disruption and hope.
15-17 AUGUST 2025
