Full programme announced for Flamm, Cornwall’s contemporary art festival
Flamm, Cornwall’s contemporary art festival, will take place in Bodmin, Cornwall, in 2026 from Saturday 28th February to Sunday 1st March 2026.
Today, Flamm is delighted to announce the full programme, taking place across the town; showing work made by those living and working in Cornwall and the South West, many being supported by the festival to realise their ideas and create new works, as well as bringing global artists to the region for the first time, with partners including Liverpool Biennial and Counterpoints Arts.
Over 20 exhibitions, installations and events over the weekend will transform the Cornish town, from the platform of the heritage railway station to Bodmin Keep and Bodmin Jail, along the high street and paths of the town and in unexpected places.
Newly commissioned artists include:
Nicola Bealing’s work spans painting, printmaking and installation. Drawing on historical narratives, folklore and everyday absurdities, she reimagines found stories with dark humour and psychological depth. For Nicola’s project, a forest of ghostly hanging baskets will transform the platform at Bodmin General into a surreal, unsettling landscape. Expanding the station’s usual eight baskets to around fifty, each will overflow with pale paper cut-outs of plants, animals and human forms. Suspended overhead, they will disrupt sightlines and movement, creating a playful yet disconcerting “glitch” in the everyday, where familiar station décor tips into something uncanny and unexpected.
Rachael Jones works between landscape, memory and human connection to place. Working with moving image, sound and installation, she often collaborates with communities to reveal layered local stories and overlooked voices. Her films balance poetic imagery with documentary sensitivity, creating intimate portraits of people and environments in flux. Rachael’s project reimagines hidden objects from Bodmin Keep’s archives while the museum undergoes repairs. Selected items will be reproduced as large weatherproof cut-outs, creating a trail around the site that leads to a film installation in the Keep’s trench. Drawing on diary entries from the collection, narrated by local voices, the film weaves personal and social histories.
Working in sculpture, installation and participatory projects, Alice Mahoney’s work often transforms everyday materials into playful yet thought-provoking assemblages that explore care, repair and transformation. Alice is interested in how objects hold memory and emotion, and how making can build connection and resilience. Alice will create an immersive installation combining light, sound, sculpture and film, inspired by Bodmin’s watery past, present and future. Beginning with participatory walks to sites such as wells, rivers and caverns, with Alice and Jonny Davey, the project gathers stories, sounds and imagery to create an audio map, sculptural works by Alice Mahoney and film by artist Naomi Frears, that move water in playful, unpredictable ways.
Rebecca Proctor’s work combines traditional craft with contemporary forms. Using hand-built and thrown methods, she explores the meeting point between utility and imagination, often drawing inspiration from natural processes, geology and coastal landscapes. Her pieces balance fragility and strength, celebrating clay’s tactile qualities and its connection to place. Widely recognised in the contemporary ceramic world, the Flamm project will see Rebecca realising her largest sculpture and first outdoor piece. Rebecca’s project responds to the legend of Rose Wright, a 19th-century Bodmin Jail inmate said to have cursed the prison. Inspired by the jackdaws she befriended, the work features around 20 black ceramic birds swirling above a charred wooden plinth that evokes the jail’s weight and history.
Colombian-born artist Carlos Zapata is known for his expressive carved wood sculptures and automata. Drawing on folk art traditions, personal history and global politics, his work tells
stories of resilience, displacement and human emotion with bold colour and intricate detail. Often both playful and unsettling, his sculptures invite reflection on cultural identity, memory and the shared experiences that connect people across borders. For Flamm 2026, Carlos will present a large-scale sculptural automaton that transforms the familiar into the unexpected at Discovering 42.
Small Acts, led by Katie Etheridge and Simon Persighetti, create participatory artworks that bring communities together in inventive, joyful ways, often in the informal “third spaces” where people naturally gather. Visual artist Kitty Hillier works with biomorphic forms, layered abstraction and research into communication and plant intelligence. Together, they present Re:Rooted, a moving sculpture developed with young dancers from KBSK. Shaped by GPS mapping and creative walking, the root‑like form is carried through Bodmin, inviting audiences to navigate the town anew and discover hidden dances along the route.
Multidisciplinary artist Georgia Gendall works across sculpture, performance, writing, photography and participatory practice, often embracing absurdity, risk and unconventional materials. Her projects challenge ecological entanglements, interspecies relationships and the systems we inhabit, from worm‑charming championships to cow‑licked sculptures. For Change Here, Gendall transforms the Bodmin Railway announcement system into an uncanny conversation between two conductors. Loosely inspired by Cornwall Railway Society accounts and structured around thermodynamic cycles, the work drifts through themes of loss, nostalgia and change.
SHARP is a queer, working‑class, socially engaged artist whose interdisciplinary practice spans experimental video, photography, sculpture and sound installation. Their work explores remembrance, collective experience and queer perspectives on the human condition, with pieces held in major public collections and recent recognition from the Henry Moore Foundation and Exeter Contemporary Art Prize. Once We Were Held draws on research into Bodmin’s Bethany Project, a radical place of rest for people with HIV/AIDS. Combining sound, scent, visuals and sculpture, the installation creates a space of queer resilience, using reclaimed daffodils to connect LGBTQIA+ care histories with Cornwall’s landscape.
As well as co-commissioning SHARP’s project, the Flamm and Counterpoints Arts partnership has enabled an artist’s exchange project - putting the theme of the festival [Dis]Location in a wider context. Facilitated by artist Sovay Berriman, one of the co-commissioned artists in 2023, three Flamm artists are paired with three Counterpoints artists. Each pair exchanges on their socially engaged work, ideas and interests through a series of conversations in the run up to Flamm 2026. These exchanges will be documented and shared online, and the group will come together for a special episode in Sovay’s Meskla Podcast post-Festival.
The artist pairs are:
● Katie Ethridge and Boseda Olawoye
● Rachael Jones and Anca Dimofte
● Alice Mahoney and Kaajal Modi
Flamm also holding a live podcast event during the festival to highlight the conversations around [Dis]Location, with Sovay Berriman & Liverpool Biennial 2025 Curator Marie-Anne McQuay, hosted by Jelena Sofronijevic of EMPIRE LINES podcast.
A collaboration with Liverpool Biennial will also bring several works from their 2025 event to Cornwall. The five selected commissions will be shown with two new commissions from Liverpool Biennial 2025: BEDROCK at Flamm 2026 by artists Linda Lamignan and Amber Akaunu:
Dear Othermother is a new film which tells a personal tale of single motherhood in Toxteth, Liverpool, by BAFTA Scholar and filmmaker Amber Akaunu. This autobiographical documentary-style film is inspired by the African proverb “it takes a village to raise a child”, and centres around single parents and their best friends who have built alternative ‘villages’ through which they collectively raise their children. Touched by the trees in a forest of eyes is a new multi-screen video work by Norwegian video and sound artist Linda Lamignan. Referencing the artist’s ancestry, the knowledge systems of animism and geology, Lamignan explores how the idea of land as a resource has been perpetuated throughout time by tracing the history of the palm oil and petroleum trade between Nigeria and Liverpool.
The festival programme is further enhanced by a wider programme of exhibitions, workshops and events led by artists and local communities.
This includes
Group exhibitions include Dialogues II with Heather Burwell, Tina Kutter, Jane Jobling, Sarah Bennett, Charlotte Squire, Chris Summerfield, John Elliott, Sara Bor, Keith Frake, Claire Gladstone, Stella Tripp at Discovering 42 and one by CAMP where the exhibition brings together 11 artists who recently connected through CAMP’s Sculpture and 3D KIN network, each with a longstanding engagement in sculptural materials and processes, and with space and/or site. Dialogues II refers to the exchanges and emerging shared themes that developed as the artists came to know one another and their respective practices. Contemporary Art Membership Platform (CAMP Membership CIC) is a member-led support and professional development network for artists, arts workers, and other creatives in the South West.
An exhibition bringing together two artists exploring what it means to be human through distinct yet overlapping perspectives. Through painting, Max Whetter approaches the subject from a male viewpoint, while Emma Digerud-White responds from a female perspective shaped by lived experience, care and emotional intimacy. Positioned within Flamm’s theme of [Dis]Location, the works consider emotional, psychological and relational states of belonging and estrangement, creating a dialogue that invites reflection on vulnerability, identity, connection and shared human experience.
Outdoor installations will pop up across the town: In the town square, with Jacqui Orly, visitors are invited to take part in a transaction. Penny for penny, pound for pound, money is exchanged for the exact same monetary value. A participant may hand over 50p and receive 50p in return, or exchange a £5 note for an equivalent amount made up of smaller denominations. There is no profit, no loss, and no apparent gain.
Elizabeth-Jane Grose presents a multi-faceted installation in St Petroc’s Soldiers’ Chapel, examining the experience of [Dis]Location through the stories of people who experienced war. Using craft-based techniques and materials, Grose creates evocative images from stuff of the lower ranks of the art world, challenging notions of a visual hierarchy.
Elsewhere, Woven voices: The Bodmin Dress Project is a collaborative textile artwork created by local artist Rebecca Wood with the Bodmin community. Through shared stories, memories, and handmade contributions, the dress reflects personal and collective transformation, celebrating Bodmin’s past, present, and creative spirit. It will be in the town’s Air Ambulance shop and will include performances. Another textile work will be by Hannah Jacobs and participants at Kinsman Estate. A Tapestry for tickets to anywhere is a collective artwork initiated by Hannah Jacob with over 100 contributors all over Cornwall, now including additions from the residents at the Kinsman and Treningle Estate. Over the last few weeks, Hannah and the residents have used collage, movement and drawing to explore how public transport affects our lives and our connection to each other, and document the interesting and significant journeys in their lives.
Work by the community and with them is also seen in Alexander Prynne’s HERE, an immersive installation piece that explores and evokes neurodivergent safe spaces and experiences. It has been created by an autistic artist in collaboration with the local neurodivergent community for an authentic experience. Alexander Prynne is an autistic creative based in Bodmin. He creates work across a range of mediums including theatre, poetry and film.
Meanwhile, Amanda Young and SkillSHARE participants’ piece is a fun, interactive installation in the form of a walk-in book dedicated to the life stories of SkillSHARE’s participants, offering visitors the opportunity to engage with the storytelling aspect of the project and to explore their own narratives as a result. The Storybook of Bodmin aims to see people come out of the shadows to recognise and discover their own significance through its pages, thus exploring their own mental and physical health and aspirations, and the place of Bodmin within this.
Bodmin sits at the heart of Cornwall, where rich history, creative culture and vast natural landscapes meet. In its lively and wide-ranging spaces – ancient streets, moorland, woodland, communities, and country estates – it is a place that rewards those who dig a little deeper. It's a place where discoveries are made.
In addition to the festival, art lovers can also explore visitor attractions such as Bodmin Jail, Bodmin Railway or St Petroc's Church, where history is at their fingertips. Bodmin is also a natural playground, where moorland gateways, rolling countryside, the Camel Trail and lush woodlands invite discovery at every turn. Visit Bodmin Moor, the rolling estate at National Trust's Lanhydrock or take a stroll in Cardinham Woods.
Music, comedy, dance and cinema come together in glorious technicolour in the town. Organisations like intoBodmin, The Beat and St Petroc’s Church throw their doors wide to creative events and performances, and with a wealth of natural inspiration, Bodmin is also home to a hive-like community of creatives.
Get up close with their work at one of the local galleries – you’ll find them tucked in streets and studios around the town. In Bodmin, you’ll find workshops in everything from art and crafts at the Bodmin Gallery & Creative Studio, to sustainability and science at Discovering42.
All photography: Jonny Weeks/ The Guardian