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Hoofing it by Sheffield-based artist Charlotte Miles, draws from the imagery of the worlds’ oldest classic horse race, the St Legers Stakes, and games such as Roll-a-Derby and Mario Kart, to create an absurd race course filled with illogical creatures and their jockeys that grows over several days of workshops to fill the entire ArtBomb shop space. To commemorate 250 Years of St Legers, ArtBomb invited Charlotte to transform our shop space on Hall Gate into a 360 degree racecourse, complete with warm grass green walls and an astroturf floor. We first came across Charlotte's work at Sunny Bank Mills' Ones to Watch 2026 exhibition back in April, where Charlotte was exhibiting A Load of Old Pony, alongside work by other emerging artists from Yorkshire, including Ellis Hutton (@ellisdavisknitwear), who was involved in ArtBomb Festival 2025. During the anniversary weekend (12 - 13 September 2026), members of the public of all ages were invited to come into ArtBomb and create their own absurd horse creature from repurposed cardboard, coloured pens & other materials, Each contribution was stuck to the walls or suspended from the ceiling, allowing the racecourse to grow whilst also doubling as a creative evaluation method by visually tracking how many people had taken part in the workshops. A large sculpture created by the artist, a hand-painted (oil paint) plywood racehorse with miniature mice jockeys and subtle absurdities such as back-to-front legs, was exhibited in one of the bay windows to generate interest from passersby and to anchor the smaller artworks made during the workshops inside. ArtBomb commissioned Jennifer Rozenfelds aka Jackhno (Instagram @jackhno_dancepunk), a local DJ and curator of gigs such as Love Music Hate Racism and EMOM (Electronic Music Open Mic), to create an audio clip to be used on a Hoofing It promotional video. "Being born and bred in Doncaster, the St Leger brings back memories from very long ago. I wanted to capture that nostalgia by sampling old horse racing commentary, bringing in some foley of horses running, and a little synth in the background too for extra texture. Using some lofi production techniques, I crunched up the sounds with digital distortion and tape wobble, which also helped to glue the layers together, alongside more traditional compression and EQing, into one coherent whole, whilst also reflecting the aural memories that I carry within my head." Mark Lambert (Instagram @mad_murals_one), an independent artist, a member of the Squiggle Gang street art collective and part-time Studio Assistant at ArtBomb, contributed to the external shop design for the exhibition, hand-painting textured green bushes and sign-writing "Hoofing it by Charlotte Miles" as per the artists' brief. ArtBomb also commissioned local DJ, Jennifer Rozenfelds aka Jackhno (Instagram @jackhno_dancepunk), to create a short audio clip to accompany a short promotional video for Hoofing It. You can hear the audio clip here. On creating the sound for this project, Jen said: "Being born and bred in Doncaster, the St Leger brings back memories from very long ago. I wanted to capture that nostalgia by sampling old horse racing commentary, bringing in some foley of horses running, and a little synth in the background too for extra texture. Using some lofi production techniques, I crunched up the sounds with digital distortion and tape wobble, which also helped to glue the layers together, alongside more traditional compression and EQing, into one coherent whole, whilst also reflecting the aural memories that I carry within my head." Jennifer Rozenfelds (aka Jackhno) ArtBomb has kept these works on display until end of October 2026, to maximise the numbers of people who get to see an artists' work. It also felt important to use our high street space to extend the St Leger anniversary celebrations beyond the race weekend, allowing local residents who may not have attended the race events to engage with the celebrations through a creative lens. This durational approach to event delivery at ArtBomb is proving to be a valuable access strategy which would work well for future heritage-based celebration events in Doncaster. Thank you to Rachel Blake (Partnership & Engagement Manager, Heritage Doncaster) for supporting our vision for this project. Funding eceived from Heritage Doncaster has enabled Charlotte to create their second large sculpture piece. In turn, it has opened up new possibilities for ArtBomb around how we can invite other visual artists to takeover our shop space and create immersive works which local residents in Doncaster can step into from the street outside. "It [my residency at ArtBomb] has been a genuinely great experience. Being given the freedom and trust to design the entire space and put on workshops has given me the confidence and experience as an emerging artist to take on solo residencies and produce more community focused projects. Jennie and Mike could not have been more accommodating and helpful, it was a pleasure to work with them on this residency." Charlotte Miles

Image credit: Jamie Bubb On Thursday 3rd September 2026, 20 people - a mix of ArtBombers and Doncaster Ramblers - headed out on a circular walk led by David Gadd and created by guest artist Mark Farid (Instagram @morkforid). We finished our walk in the sun-drenched ArtBomb courtyard, for a shared meal by Paula Lockey and a debrief hosted by Mark's collaborator and urban sociologist, Louise Rondel. The walk was part of an ongoing Arts Council-supported research project called At a Crossroads by Mark Farid. Mark is collaborating with local Rambler leaders in cities across the UK to explore how forms of governance and control are built into the urban landscape, and perhaps to see how this varies depending on which part of the country you live in. Image credit: Jamie Bubb Since his trip to Doncaster, Mark has taken At a Crossroads down to East London (3 October 2026), where he collaborated with Live Art Development Agency (LADA) to explore ownership and access, signage, road design and the pedestrian crossing as a site where the state, governance and the body collide. Mark gave an insight into the history of jaywalking in California and the disparities in the pedestrian's relationship to roads globally- From Berlin to Warsaw, Chengdu and Doncaster - during his artist talk presented at ArtBomb's Stories Grow Here forum event on Friday 4 September. The walk was documented by Doncaster-based photographer, Jamie Bubb. A selection of his brilliant photos are presented here, as a visual insight into what we got up to on the day. Image credit: Jamie Bubb "At a Crossroads is about how control is built into the ground we move through, and how obedience becomes so habitual it no longer looks like obedience at all. In Doncaster, with the Ramblers and the ArtBomb community, we went looking for it on foot, six miles out of Hexthorpe, over the Don and through Sprotbrough, past the prison and back into town, three hours of deliberate attention with a camera on us the whole way. And somewhere near the end the group came off a single-file path, bunched together, and crossed the road without anyone looking. We only found it afterwards, at ArtBomb, when the photographer said it aloud. That is the thing itself: you can walk out specifically to catch it, and it will still happen behind your back. The system does not need to determine every footstep, because it has already taken the ground the footstep moves across. Thank you to ArtBomb and the Doncaster Ramblers, who gave us the walk, the room, and the conversation that made it visible." Mark Farid

FREE FAMILY-FRIENDLY COMMUNITY EVENT — DONATIONS WELCOME Saturday 31 October 2026 12 - 4PM Doncaster Unitarians, 60 Hall Gate, DN1 3PB Followed by Love Music Hate Racism gig: 7PM til late Join us on Saturday 31st October for a free community autumn celebration featuring:- ECO HALLOWEEN CRAFTS WITH ZOE WRIGHT APPLE PRESSING WITH THE CONSERVATION VOLUNTEERS (TCV SOUTH YORKSHIRE) SEASONAL PLANTING WORKSHOPS MURAL LAUNCH WITH SQUIGGLE GANG STREET ARTIST COLLECTIVE "HOW TO BUILD AN ARTBOMB" ZINE LAUNCH & READINGS WITH DAISY WALL & TERRY HUDSON PAPERMAKING, IRISH MYTHOLOGY & THE ORIGINS OF HALLOWEEN WITH FIONA CAHILL SPOKEN WORD WITH MOLLY EROJE LIVE MUSIC ArtBomb and Doncaster Unitarians warmly invite Halloween revellers to venture through the Gates of Hell (we mean Hall Gate, probably) for an afternoon of family-friendly fun. This Hallow's Eve, we're going back to the festivals' ecological roots, welcoming in the darker nights through eco-crafting, seasonal planting workshops, Irish folklore, live music, spoken word and apple pressing. The event is also the next chapter in Stories Grow Here, our ongoing courtyard redevelopment project through which we're reimagining this hidden urban oasis as many things - a garden, a gallery, a music venue, a testbed for new ideas… and on 31 October, perhaps a portal to a glorious underworld, where creative misfits roam free and people dance into the early hours. Image credit: Tom Marshall, Senior Project Officer, The Conservation Volunteers Squiggle Gang: if these walls could talk As part of the afternoon, Squiggle Gang, Doncaster’s homegrown street art collective, will unveil the second in a series of large-scale murals created especially for the Doncaster Unitarians courtyard. Together, these public artworks will transform the open air space into Doncaster's hub for street art, a new legacy we hope to keep growing into 2027 through on-site street art workshops and citywide street art interventions. Squiggle Gang mural launch 04.09.26 Image credit: Jennie Gilman How to Build an ArtBomb: Zine Launch We will also be launching How to Build an ArtBomb, a brand-new zine publication by local student and emerging creative, Daisy Wall. Featuring contributions from Terry Hudson, Chris Perkins (Creative Push CIC), this 32-page documents some of the extraordinary projects made by ArtBomb artists and collaborators throughout 2026. Inside are stories of housing, migration, belonging, music, activism and making things happen — from Darshan Gajjar’s My Home in Doncaster, a short documentary exploring migration through the lens of belonging and home, to Kalabash's EcoSoundSystem, an interactive audio visual experience incorporating data sampled from the River Don. There’s also the evolving story of Mother Fhungus, a monthly gig series led by a youth music collective quietly transforming Doncaster Unitarian church into a grassroots music hub. At its core, the DIY zine showcases ArtBomb as less a tightly polished arts organisation than an experiment in creative community building. It’s a celebration of the people who make things happen: artists, musicians, performers, makers, organisers, activists, volunteers, audiences, neighbours, curious people — and people who don’t necessarily think of themselves as any of those things. Printed in A5 risograph and digital formats, the zine will be available to buy on 31 October, or from the ArtBomb shop whilst stock lasts. And then things get loud… As darkness falls, the afternoon will give way to the Love Music Hate Racism gig in the main hall of Doncaster Unitarian church. With more than nine bands and artists taking to the stage, expect an eclectic night of rock, punk, synth pop and dub — bringing the community together through the simple, powerful combination of great music and standing together against racism. Gig dress code: Dress to Distress! Buy gig tickets in advance here. Tickets are also available on the door for £10. Minimum Age: 16+ (under 16's must be accompanied by an adult) What to expect As with all of ArtBomb's programming, we want to make this event as safe, accessible and inclusive as possible. The event is entirely free, and no pre-booking is required. Any donations made will be used to support ArtBomb in growing its creative community here in the heart of Doncaster. There will be a dedicated quiet zone on the ground floor of the church where there are comfortable couches and chairs. There are also benches and chairs in our outdoor courtyard area. Please note that this event features outdoor elements, so please dress appropriately for the weather. If it rains, we will bring all activities indoors. ArtBomb team members and volunteers supporting the running of the event will be wearing coloured lanyards or badges. They will be on hand to offer support throughout the day. If you have any concerns, please report to them. Please email jennie@artbomb.uk.com if there's a way we can make this event more accessible for you. Getting here GETTING HER Address: Doncaster Unitarian & Free Christian Church, 60a Hall Gate DN1 3PB ArtBomb is located at 60 Hall Gate, Doncaster city-centre: a 10 minute walk from the train station. Please note that there is no on-site parking. The nearest car park is NCP Doncaster, 1 Frances Street, Doncaster DN1 1JD. If you have any questions about the event, please email admin@artbombuk.com Looking forward to see you there

FREE FAMILY-FRIENDLY COMMUNITY EVENT — DONATIONS WELCOME 2pm–4pm Saturday 31st October 2026 @Doncaster Unitarians, 60a Hall Gate, Doncaster DN1 3PB As part of our Stories Grow Here: Hallow's Eve Courtyard Bash, artists Fiona Cahill and Molly Eroje, who share a studio at Doncaster Unitarians, are opening their space and sharing works in progress with the public. Fiona will be using handmade papers made from foliage found in the the Doncaster Unitarian courtyard, and some very special papers from the ancient ritualised landscape of Ireland to bring the origin story of Halloween from Oweynagat Cave to the studio There will be beautiful spoken word from Molly, a collective planting ritual and the debut showing of a new short film, plus repair workshops and more! Followed by Love Music Hate Racism gig: 7pm til late

Saturday 31 October 2026 7pm til late @ Doncaster Unitarians, 60a Hall Gate, Doncaster DN1 3PB With more than nine bands and artists taking to the stage, expect an eclectic night of rock, punk, synth pop and dub — Love Music Hate Racism — brings the community together through the simple, powerful combination of great music and standing together against racism. Gig dress code: Dress to Distress! Buy gig tickets in advance here. Tickets are also available on the door for £10. Minimum Age 16+ (under 16's must be accompanied by an adult)

ARTIST TALKS | FILM PREMIERE | CREATIVE WORKSHOPS | LIVE MUSIC | FOOD Friday 4 September 2026 11am - 5pm, followed by Fhungus Friday live music gig (6pm onwards) Doncaster Unitarian & Free Christian Church, 60a Hall Gate, Doncaster, DN1 3PB FREE ENTRY (Pay As You Feel donations welcome) Spaces are limited, please email admin@artbombuk.com to reserve your spot! On Friday 4th September, ArtBomb warmly welcomes you to Stories Grow Here, an all-day celebratory event looking back at a wonderful Summer 2026 at ArtBomb and looking forward to what's next! Through artist talks, creative workshops, live music, food and the premiere of Darshan Gajjar's short documentary film, ArtBomb invites artists and local residents to explore questions of belonging, home, movement, access and art as intervention in public space. The day will be facilitated by Olamide Olaniyan (aka Olamide Sax), a Nigerian-born saxophonist and creative practitioner who has been collaborating with ArtBomb and local bands such as The Skintones since early 2026. Through music-making, Olamide will help shape the rhythm and energy of the day. From Olamide Sax’s Better Rhythm drum circle session and Fiona Cahill’s handmade paper workshop, to Squiggle Gang’s collaborative mural-making, Creative Push’s screen-printing and Terry Hudson’s Little Anarchist Bookshop, the programme creates opportunities to make, listen, play and share. Alongside these hands-on activities, Mark Farid’s artist talk, Tinta Ali’s philosophical discussion on the intersection of migration and homelessness, Jack Clarke and Ciara O’Rourke’s exploration of housing and exclusion, and the premiere of Darshan Gajjar’s My Home in Doncaster invite us to examine the structures that shape our communities—and imagine how they might be changed. This all-day event is an early celebration of the ongoing redevelopment of ArtBomb and Doncaster Unitarian's courtyard area into a creative, open air third space hiding in plain sight on Hall Gate, Doncaster city-centre. Stories Grow Here offers the courtyard as fertile ground— a place to sow new ideas, where different perspectives can grow alongside one another and to see what kind of positive social impact can take root when creativity is given room to grow. At 5pm, the day moves from making and discussion to music, with Jackhno and Fhungus Friday carrying the programme into the evening. EVENT SCHEDULE: AT A GLANCE 11.00 Arrival time 11.30 Welcome & Introduction 11.40 Mark Farid | GUEST ARTIST TALK (KEYNOTE) 12:10 Reflecting on The Anti-Social Housing Agency (Arts & Homelessness commission) with Jack Clarke & Ciara O'Rourke | RESIDENCY ARTIST SHARING 12.30 Bless the People Who Live in this House | FILM SCREENING + GUEST PHILOSOPHER 13.00 Fiona Cahill | GUEST ARTIST TALK 13.15 LUNCH | Pay As You Feel vegetarian meal by Paula Lockey 14.30 My Home in Doncaster (Rethinking Migration commission) FILM PREMIERE + Q&A 15.00 Squiggle Gang | MURAL DISCUSSION 15.30 Fiona Cahill | AUTOCARTOGRAPHY PAPERMAKING WORKSHOP Olamide Olanayan | BETTER RHYTHM DRUM CIRCLE Squiggle Gang | STREET ART DRAWING WORKSHOP Terry Hudson | LITTLE ANARCHIST BOOKSHOP & ZINE-MAKING Creative Push – Print It Live | SCREENPRINTING WORKSHOP 17.00 Stories Grow Here event finishes Jackhno live electronic set in courtyard 18.00 Fhungus Friday | GIG MEET THE ARTISTS Mark Farid GUEST SPEAKER @morkforid www.markfarid.com Mark Farid is an artist and Senior Lecturer in Fine Art at Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London, and a PhD candidate at the Creative Computing Institute. His practice explores the intersection between the virtual and physical worlds, examining how new technologies shape individuals’ sense of self and collective perception. Farid’s work draws on hacker ethics and focuses on privacy policies, surveillance technologies, and advocacy for data privacy and protection. Collectively, his projects form a critique of contemporary social, legal, and political structures. At a Crossroads: Urban Walk in Doncaster with Mark Farid & Doncaster Ramblers What does the act of crossing the road reveal about how we are governed? At a Crossroads, a new project by artist Mark Farid, treats pedestrian crossings as sites where the state, governance and the body collide, and follows how obedience becomes so habitual it no longer looks like obedience at all. The project began this year at the British School at Rome, filming crossings in eight cities across seven countries, and its English phase, supported by Arts Council England, now comes to Doncaster. On Thursday 3rd September, a circular walk moves from rural edge ground into the town centre. Led by David Gadd of Doncaster Ramblers with artist Mark Farid and Urban Sociologist Louise Rondel co-leading, the walk traces how control is embedded in the ground we move through: access rights and private land, fencing, signage, road design and the pedestrian crossing. The event is a circular walk of around six miles at a leisurely pace, starting at 10am from 209 Urban Road, Hexthorpe, Doncaster DN4 0HH. Around midday the walk pauses at ArtBomb, 60 Hall Gate, for food and a partly recorded group discussion of around an hour and a half, before the return leg to Hexthorpe. The event finishes by mid-afternoon. The walk pauses at ArtBomb for food and a debrief, a group conversation about what everyone noticed, then loops back to where it began. The walk is free and places are limited. Meeting Point: 209 Urban Road, Hexthorpe, Doncaster DN4 0HH Date: Thursday 3rd September 2026 Time: 11am start | Finishes mid-afternoon Distance: Approx. 6 miles | Leisurely pace Lunch provided. Please dress appropriately depending on the weather, wear suitable footwear, and bring a bottle of water to stay hydrated. On Friday 4th September, ArtBomb proudly presents Mark as our keynote speaker for Stories Grow Here. Mark will dive into his digital art practice, his early research into At a Crossroads and pose questions around the social impact of contemporary art in the public realm. Olamide Phillips Olaniyan (aka Olamide Sax) HOST & MUSIC WORKSHOP FACILITATOR @olamide.sax www.olamidesax.co.uk Olamide Phillips Olaniyan is a Nigerian-born, Doncaster-based Afro-fusion artist, multi-instrumentalist, participatory artist and creative facilitator. He has ten years and more of live performance, blending saxophone, Yoruba percussion, piano, vocals and storytelling. On Friday 4th September, Olamide will debut Better Rhythm, a participatory creative wellbeing session that uses African drumming, saxophone, voice, movement and cultural storytelling to bring people together through rhythm, creativity and shared experience. Drawing from Yoruba musical heritage and creative health practice, the session explores how rhythm can support wellbeing, confidence, connection and cultural exchange. Olamide also features in the My Home in Doncaster short film by Darshan Gajjar, discussing his story of moving to Doncaster and the role played by music to bring communities together. Ciara O'Rourke & Jack Clarke RESIDENCY ARTIST SHARING @clarkeofsalford @ciara_lil_makes_things Jack Clarke & Ciara O'Rourke are the artist duo behind The Anti-Social Housing Agency, a satirical furniture showroom-cum-housing agency designed in response to ArtBomb's Arts & Homelessness commission. The project uses the visual language of housing offices, furnished tenancies, hostile architecture, waiting rooms, domestic interiors and showrooms to provoke discussion around the systems that shape who gets to feel safe, who gets pushed out, and who is quietly designed against. Through this, The Anti-Social Housing Agency looks at hostile architecture, social housing, rough sleeping, temporary accommodation, furniture poverty and the everyday ways public and private spaces can isolate, exclude or control people. On Friday 4th September, Jack and Ciara break down the process of creating The Anti-Social Housing Agency, their partnerships with local housing and social care charities, the conversations they've had with Doncaster residents, the conclusions they've reached, and probably more importantly, the questions the project has left them with. Tinta Ali GUEST PHILOSOPHER Tinta Ali is a philosopher, community advocate and Partnership and Engagement Coordinator at ARC (Asylum & Refugee Community) Blackburn. Born in the Ivory Coast, he came to the UK seeking asylum after fleeing persecution during the country’s civil war in 2010. Drawing on more than 12 years in the non-profit sector and his own lived experience, Tinta speaks powerfully about migration, belonging, identity, community and what it means to build a life somewhere new. He appears in Bless The People Who Live in This House, reflecting on these questions through his own experiences and wider philosophy of home, dignity and human connection. On Friday 4th September, Tinta offers a philosophical reflection on the intersection of migration and homelessness, the anti-immigration rhetoric embedded in the far right's response to the UK housing crisis, initiating an open conversation about where ArtBomb's Rethinking Migration and Arts & Homelessness commissions meet. Darshan Gajjar RESIDENCY ARTIST FILM PREMIERE @darshangajjar darshangajjar.co.uk On Friday 4th September, ArtBomb is delighted to premier My Home in Doncaster, a short documentary film created by Sheffield-based filmmaker, Darshan Gajjar, in response to ArtBomb's Rethinking Migration commission. Created in collaboration with CAST, My Home in Doncaster is not your typical documentary. Darshan invited members of the public who call Doncaster home to sit down, grab a cup of tea, and have an informal chat about their lives, experiences, and what home means to them, from a constructed living room on Hall Gate. The project explores how we can humanise one another beyond labels. By bringing together voices from migrant and non-migrant backgrounds, we wanted to create space for honest conversations and show that while our experiences may be different, we often have far more in common than we realise. Many thanks to Nicola Doyle of CAST, Sharon Wilson from Changing Lives and Mary Macmillan of Citizens Advice Doncaster Borough for their support throughout both the Rethinking Migration and Arts & Homelessness projects. Fiona Cahill @elysiandaisies Fiona Cahill is an artist, activist and carer living in South Yorkshire. From a line of Irish single mothers her work explores institutional abuse, politics, grief and the power of the natural world to overcome separation and containment. Having presented her first exhibition, Rendition, at ArtBomb Fiona is currently touring her own solo show and her work can be seen now in The National Museum of Ireland in the ‘Changing Ireland’ gallery. On Friday 4th September, Fiona will host an introductory session to auto-cartography, an artistic framework used to map one's heritage and psychological or cultural geography, through paper-making. Using organic materials found in the courtyard such as leaves, bark, soils & flowers, Fiona will show you how to make your own paper from homemade paper pulp, curly cress seeds, nettle twine and a sewing needle. Squiggle Gang @squiggle.gang Join Doncaster-based street artist collective Squiggle Gang to hear the story behind their work in progress mural, a brand new public artwork commissioned by ArtBomb & Doncaster Unitarian church as part of the redevelopment of the courtyard into an open air creative space in the heart of Doncaster. We want ArtBomb & Doncaster Unitarian's shared courtyard space to flourish into a lively hub for street art. We have near-future plans to commission more large-scale murals and to launch a legal spray-painting wall to present new work by emerging street artists. At our Stories Grow Here event, we're inviting members of the public to have a say in the types of street art we might commission next. Take inspiration from the nature, art and community of the courtyard to draw your own mural designs! Squiggle Gang will be on hand to provide tips & tricks. Posca pens, paper & other drawing materials will be provided. Creative Push CIC @creativepushcic Join Chris Perkins of Creative Push CIC for a hands-on screen-printing experience. Bring your own T-shirt, tote bag or fabric item, or pick up a tote bag on the day, and create a one-of-a-kind print to take home. Come and meet the team and find out how we’re making creativity accessible for everyone through inclusive workshops and community projects. Jackhno @jackhno_dancepunk Jackhno (Jen Rozenfelds) is an electronic musician and eco-socialist who plays live alternative dance music with a punky attitude. Jen is also the organiser of Doncaster's EMOM events (Electronic Music Open Mic). Jackhno will be taking us into the early evening with a warm-up set in the courtyard, before doors open for the Fhungus Friday gig at 6pm. Sample the original sounds of Jackhno on YouTube Fhungus Friday Gig @motherfhungusevents Fhungus Friday, a monthly music gig featuring a vibrant line up of local bands, is brought to you by Mother Fhungus – a Doncaster collective using DIY music to highlight positive shifts, ideas and alternatives in and outside our local community. Find event updates & ticket links on the Mother Fhungus Events Linktree. Tickets will also be available to buy on the door! WHAT TO EXPECT As with all of ArtBomb's programming, we want to make this event as accessible and inclusive as possible. Please email jennie@artbomb.uk.com if there's a way we can make this event more accessible for you. The event is entirely free, including a buffet-style vegetarian lunch and drinks served throughout the day. Some activities are pay what you feel. Any donations made will be used to support ArtBomb in growing its creative community here in the heart of Doncaster. We're expecting around 80-100 guests to be joining us! There will be two dedicated quiet zones: one on the ground floor of the church and upstairs in the ArtBomb building, where there are comfortable couches and chairs. There are also benches and chairs in our outdoor courtyard area. Team members supporting the running of the event will be wearing coloured lanyards or badges. They will be on hand to offer support throughout the day. GETTING HERE Address: Doncaster Unitarian & Free Christian Church, 60a Hall Gate DN1 3PB ArtBomb is located at 60 Hall Gate, Doncaster city-centre: a 10 minute walk from the train station. Please note that there is no on-site parking. The nearest car park is NCP Doncaster, 1 Frances Street, Doncaster DN1 1JD. If you have any questions about the event, please email admin@artbombuk.com Looking forward to see you there! Event curated by Jennie Gilman & Mikes Stubbs

22nd August–5th September 2025 @ArtBomb 60 Hall Gate, Doncaster Recovery has stories we tell openly, and stories we’ve carried quietly for years. SECRETS is an LGBTQIA+ recovery art exhibition bringing those experiences into the light through creativity, honesty and community. A space to explore identity, addiction, recovery, belonging, shame, freedom, survival and everything that exists in between. Because recovery isn’t one story. It isn’t one identity. And nobody should have to hide who they are to find their way home. Come for the art. Stay for the conversation. Come exactly as you are. Some secrets deserve to be set free. Created by Art Bomb UK and Sober Social – Recovery + Community.

In August 2025, ArtBomb Festival returned with a weekend of creative disruption, deep reflection, and curated chaos. Last year’s theme — A Meaningful Use of Time — invited artists, audiences, thinkers, communities, and dreamers to slow down and tune in. Time is spoken of like money. We spend it, waste it, try to save it. This commodification of time has roots in the Industrial Revolution, when the sun gave way to the clock as the measure of a working day. That legacy persists — not only in the Amazon warehouse, but in how we define ourselves: by what we do, not who we are or how we live. Live art interventions, spoken word and live music spilled out from ArtBomb's hub and onto the streets of Doncaster city centre, disrupting the rhythms of ‘normal’ life. Alongside over 20 artists, including the folk behind The Fete of Britain, a touring arts festival celebrating the people and places making our neighbourhoods and nation amazing, ArtBomb invited local audiences to spend time in the public realm differently: to make, debate and dance, to listen and loiter with strangers in an urban ecology which brandishes street dwelling as anti-social behaviour. Over 3 days, we welcomed around 1450 festival visitors to our activities, with thousands of members of the public encountering our promenaging performances and robot bins wreaking joyful havoc through the city-centre. Read on to hear more about our ArtBomb Festival 2025 highlights, alongside some brilliant photos by Matt Hass. “We need more spaces like this" Audience member “A highlight for me personally was sitting quietly in the church courtyard hearing the flow of gentle hubbub around me, as groups of people met, chatted, created things together, explored their community connections in Doncaster, and just had a happy time. I saw how the courtyard offers space that is accessible yet secluded, public yet well looked after, and offers an inclusive welcome where sacred meets social." Liz Slade, Unitarian Chief Officer “The way you can create an audience, a theatre and dialogue between people who wouldn't usually talk to each other just by moving a bin became fascinating... the idea behind all the work that we do is to make people smile and think, and by making people smile and think, we can encourage people to talk to each other." Roger Hartley, Bureau of Silly Ideas "I loved Karolina's workshop, especially the fact that it was combining activity in nature (foraging) and an art project linked to materials derived from it. Would love to see more similar initiatives." Audience member “My son who is 5 absolutely loved the experience. I personally loved that I got to attend something so different in Doncaster and didn’t have to travel out the city to gain access to culture & art." Audience member “For me this [Ray Lee's Siren] was the standout work. Evoking feelings of censorship, landmines, people in tenterhooks much like what we are living right now. The sporadic sound lent an eerie feelings, especially with it being in a dark room with these red flashing lights." Linda Cassels “Something is waiting here, quietly, if you pause long enough to notice it." Jack Clarke, Z Magazine A huge thanks to everyone who helped us make ArtBomb Festival 2025 so memorable, and for supporting ArtBomb's mission of becoming a northern platform for creative resistance & solidarity! Reading list Dive into some of the ideas which informed our thinking around “A Meaningful Use of Time": How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy by Jenny Odell (2019) Out of Time by Andrea Phillips (ed. Hull Time Based Arts, 1998) Ikigai: The Japanese Secret to a Long and Happy Life by Hector Garcia & Francesc Miralles (Penguin, 2016) The Things You Can See Only When You Slow Down by Haemin Sunim (Penguin, 2012) Meditations for Mortals by Oliver Burkeman (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2024) Essays in Idleness – The Tsurezuregusa of Kenko (Translations from the Asian Classics) trans. Donald Keene (Columbia University Press, 1998) Capitalist Realism: Is there no alternative? by Mark Fisher (Zero Books, 2009) Apartheid Apartments: A Showroom for a Genocide We’re Still Furnishing by Jack Clarke https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/apartheid-apartments-a-showroom-for-a-genocide-were-still-furnishing/

ArtBomb presents: EcoSoundSystem, the interactive sonic artwork turning hardcore ecological data into something we can move to. On Friday 10th July, ArtBomb launches a mycellium-inspired soundsystem and a DIY night of live electronic music spread across two floors in Doncaster Unitarian Church. Doors open 5pm (Pay as You Feel tickets available on the door) “Data alone will not compel people to reverse the decline of nature…” offers Simon Pickles,“...society needs to feel the urgency before it acts and to do that, individuals must connect with nature. Connect directly through immersion and indirectly through experience.” Simon is the Director of the North and East Yorkshire Ecological Data Centre (NEYDEC), and a prominent figure in UK biological recording, specialising in environmental planning, conservation technology, and biodiversity monitoring. In spite of his occupation, Simon understands that the climate crisis is not just a scientific or technical challenge. It's a crisis of values, power and of storytelling. Dominated by graphs and policy papers, climate discourse often fails to chart the connection between the natural world and the lived realities of ordinary people. It fails to explain why people should care about the climate crisis now, when there are so many other, immediate priorities to contend with: from rising rent prices, to putting food on the table, to safeguarding one’s own mental health. That human-nature dissonance is an idea which leader of the Green Party, Zak Polanski, has spearheaded in his reframing of climate action as foremost a social justice issue intimately tied to economic inequality. Data alone will not move people towards climate action, but perhaps a dance-fuelled night of live electronic music and art will? That’s where ArtBomb — Doncaster’s engine of creative disruption set in a former estate agents — comes in. Through a public programme operating at the intersection of art and activism, ArtBomb creates moments which gather strangers together and remind people of their shared humanity. Towards the end of 2025, Simon Pickles approached ArtBomb with an idea for an ecology-focused artist residency called “Pin Back ‘Tha Lugholes”, a distinctly Yorkshire phrase meaning “listen up”. Artists from across the UK were invited to pitch a project which uses technology to translate complex ecological data sampled from in and around Doncaster into an audio-visual format which invites new ways of listening to and observing the natural environment. Alby Daniels, Joe Caple and Aramis Gorriete, aka Kalabash — an electronic music production trio from London — responded to the brief with the idea of a live, durational sound installation which translates real time environmental data from the River Don and nearby habitats into evolving soundscapes. Kalabash — whose original music has been featured on Radio 6 and Mixmag — have collaborated with the likes of Jelani Blackman, a London rapper featured in Kneecap’s platinum album, Fine Art (2024). In a posthumanist shift, Kalabash are now making music with the River Don. Since November 2025, the trio have been listening, walking and recording along Doncaster’s urban waterways, harvesting subaquatic sounds, as well as the sound of local traffic and human activity. “We’re interested in how these sonic layers co-exist” says Alby, “and how the local ecology continues to adapt in the shadow of human infrastructure”. Ten months later, Kalabash have transformed these recordings into EcoSoundSystem, a bespoke sound system unlike anything out there. Inspired by the branching logic of mycelial networks, EcoSoundSystem is an interactive audiovisual environment which grows from the main hall of Doncaster Unitarian Church, a hidden heritage gem tucked between a Yates’ pub and an independent guitar shop on Hall Gate, Doncaster city-centre. The installation combines large-scale projection, live plant data and synths connected to the church organ, all interconnected by a sprawling network of speakers and sound sources positioned around the space. Transforming the church hall into an immersive soundscape, the work encourages visitors to move around and explore the space, to encounter the distinction between the involuntary nature of hearing and the conscious state of deep listening. At the heart of the installation sits a control station, where visitors are invited to become a DJ and shift the balance of sound and vision in the room using a 4-channel controller. In this sense, the work behaves like a living organism. The sonic environment constantly evolves and reacts to human action, implicating every visitor into a networked ecology. The result is a looping, shape-shifting track composed by hundreds of humans and underscored by nature’s unpredictable rhythms. From 7pm, the evening will shift from sonic meditation to a night of original electronic music, synth pop, post-punk & straight-up dance beats curated by Jen Rozenfelds aka Jackhno, a Doncaster born, non-binary genderfluid electronic musician, playing house & techno influenced alt-dance & electropunk designed to get dancefloors moving. Post-lockdown, Jen has been working hard to bring the Electronic Open Mic Night movement- which first started in Manchester in 2017- to Doncaster, as well as releasing original music. You can listen to her latest track “Kandiaronk” — a bass heavy, head-nodding stoner groove — on Bandcamp. When asked about her motivation to bringing EMOM to Doncaster, Jen said: “To me, EMOM is about helping grassroots music in Doncaster, particularly the live electronic scene. We have a lot of creative talent in our city but it often goes unnoticed because there aren't many outlets for it, which is why a DIY attitude is so important in providing opportunities for the live & original musicians of Doncaster.” That this sonic artwork-cum-club night is taking place in a Unitarian church hall is important. It’s important because, as an inclusive, non-denominational faith space purpose-built to congregate people, the setting explicitly reframes the idea of strangers being gathered around music as a modern ritual, for a culture that has forgotten ritual. This echoes what the late great Andrew Weatherall dubbed “gnostic ceremony” — the idea that dancing to electronic music amongst smoke and strobes — edges towards a kind of transcendence. Dancefloors are not just for hedonistic entertainment. They can synchronize humans emotionally, physiologically and socially. That may have been true of the 90’s and early 00’s. The problem today is that gnostic ceremony is being lost to the collapse of club culture. Some of the best underground clubs across the north have closed their doors in recent years, including Wire, The Imaginarium and Freedom Mills in Leeds and most recently, The White Hotel in Manchester, which recently announced its immanent closure in January 2027. There are some electronic music festivals — such as Houghton Festival in Norfolk and Gottwood Festival in Anglesey — which somewhat manage to cultivate Weatherall’s ideas around electronic music and ritualistic ceremony by capping audience numbers at 5,000-10,000, in a bid to sustain the type of intimacy needed for audiences to feel connected to the music and the people around them . But these experiences are only accessible to those in a position to spend £300+ on a festival ticket. What’s missing, and what we need more than ever, are contemporary, community-led music events which have their roots in DIY free party culture and teknivals. For ArtBomb Festival 2025, we presented Ray Lee's Siren in the main hall of the church, and witnessed hundreds of people become spellbound by the sonic sculpture. Presenting Ray's work allowed us to see the potential of the church as a site for truly outstanding, large-scale sonic experiences. On the back of Ray's piece, we wanted to commission a brand new sonic artwork for 2026 which exists somewhere between ecological science, art and electronic music, which offers audiences new insights into climate beauty and climate catastrophe, and at the same time, a great night out. We hope EcoSoundSystem by Kalabash achieves exactly that! Words by Jennie Gilman (ArtBomb Co-Curator) INFORMATION After opening night, EcoSoundSystem will remain open as a self-running installation Open daily 11am-4pm 10-26 July 2026 Generously supported by NEYDEC & Arts Council England

7th Feb 2026 As part of our ongoing project with ArtBomb, Kalabash spent several days across the Winter months of 2025 listening, walking, and recording along the River Don. We gathered sounds from the water and wildlife, as well as the sound of local traffic and human activity. We’re interested in how these layers coexist, and how the local ecology continues to adapt in the shadow of human infrastructure. Alongside sound recording, we also captured bio-electric signals from local plants and wild mushrooms. Using small sensors clipped to leaves, stems, and fungi, we recorded tiny electrical changes produced as living organisms respond to light, moisture, and disturbance. Rather than treating this as novelty “nature music”, we see these signals as another way of listening to the environment’s behaviour over time. This process sits within our interest in deep listening as an artistic practice. Instead of representing nature or explaining it, we’re interested in creating conditions where people can tune into ongoing processes in engaging and visceral ways. Bio-electric signals resist regular rhythm and repetition, which naturally pushes us away from fixed musical structures and towards slower, more chaotic systems that feel closer to how natural environments operate. At this stage, the audio and data we collected are still raw. The next phase of the project is about experimentation and discovery, allowing this material to shape the direction the work takes rather than forcing it into a predefined form. We’re excited to see how these sounds and signals begin to influence the project as it develops, and what they reveal and inspire when given time and attention. Words by Alby Daniels (Kalabash) Listen to music by Kalabash on Soundcloud here. Keep up with what the London-based electronic music trio are up to ovet on their Instagram (@kalabashmusic)