MAY 2024 · WITNESS
Dream again
Brighton, East Sussex
The Children's Parade opens the Brighton Festival every May. A thousand children from schools across the city walk through the centre carrying what they built. This year: a golden crescent moon face, features cast from a mould and painted with care, carried on a pole past a hot-pink shopfront. An orange spaceship with cut-pattern panels, tall enough to see above the crowd. A blue and purple puppet on a frame, trailing coloured ribbon streamers four metres long.
I was in the crowd, moving with it and across it, working low to get the handmade detail at scale. The things that interested me were the specific fabrications: the paper stars, the flower headdresses on cream and white costumes, the individual beads and ribbons sewn onto orange fur. Each piece was made by children in school art departments over weeks. The cumulative effect is a city street turned into something unrecognisable for two hours.
A figure in a red costume blows soap bubbles. They float into the frame and out again before the shutter closes. One stays, briefly, sharp against the background.
What threads through the noise are the colours.
Brighton city centre — May 2024
The parade moves slowly. The crowd is dense enough to be its own subject — faces at windows above, people three deep on the pavement, a man trying to film on his phone from the wrong side. What threads through the noise are the colours. Orange and pink above the grey Victorian terrace line. Rainbow lanterns at eye level. The crepe paper and paint showing up saturated in the May light.
Brighton Pavilion is visible at the end of the route, its onion domes framing the orange spaceship float as it passes. The float's pink sign is too far away to read. A child in orange costume carries large decorated box structures on their back, tilted forward under the weight of them.
The parade has been running since 1994. The moon face returns each year in a different form.
Colourful parade floats including giant orange star and ornate dome structure amid crowds in Brighton city centre
Golden crescent moon face sculpture with ornate features outside a bright pink storefront on parade route
Child in red costume blowing bubbles surrounded by floating soap bubbles at street-level parade view
Large orange furry creature costume with elaborate headdress adorned with flowers and decorative elements
Two participants in elaborate white and cream costumes with floral headdresses and coloured ribbon details
Tall decorated puppet with blue and purple painted face and flowing coloured ribbon streamers
Close-up of colourful parade lanterns including orange, white and multicoloured paper designs with star shapes
Rainbow coloured lantern and red star decoration among parade floats with white and yellow elements
Parade participant in orange costume carrying large decorated box structures through Brighton streets
Parade float with giant orange rocket ship and pink signage amid crowd with Brighton pavilion backdrop
Orange spaceship-shaped float with intricate patterns and pink sign among crowded street parade spectacle
Parade participant in elaborate costume with face paint surrounded by spectators on Brighton street