Anyone who missed the opening Southbank concerts of the Chinike! Orchestra, figurehead of a foundation which aims to give much-needed help to young Black and Minority Ethnic (BME) classical musicians, could and now can (on YouTube) catch snippets of the players in action on the splendid documentary about young cellist Sheku Kanneh-Mason.

For The Birds is art as event, described in the Brighton Festival programme as “an immersive night-time adventure into a wild avian landscape”. It takes place throughout the Festival and, judging from its opening weekend, looks likely to prove very popular. To attend, you take a bus from one of two spots in Brighton (one central, one outlying) and are shipped to a “secret woodland location”, then asked to follow lights strung overhead on a mile long trek during which a wide selection of pieces boggle the eye, ear and mind.

Shirley Collins was one of the Sixties British folk music revival’s central figures. Having built a reputation as a highly rated innovator and interpreter during the course of the decade (initially with her lover/partner, American folklorist Alan Lomax), she released her Anthems in Eden album in 1969, a key text for all that followed in folk and folk-rock.

Eddie Otchere is best known for the plethora of photographs he’s taken of artists from hip hop’s golden age, circa the late-Eighties/early-Nineties. He’s shot everyone from icons such as Jay-Z and Biggie Smalls, to the late Aaliyah to a startling series of images of Wu Tang Clan. Born and raised in London, he was also very much involved in documenting the birth of British bass culture on the drum & bass scene, most especially the seminal Metalheadz night at the Blue Note.

Jony Easterby (b. 1966) is an artist renowned for working on large-scale projects that combine the natural world with technology and sound. Born and raised in Birmingham, he now resides in the Welsh countryside at Machynlleth, Powys. As a recording artist, he worked extensively with Norwegian vanguard electronic musician Biosphere, and was very much involved with the Big Chill Festival during its heyday. He has led a wide array of acclaimed artistic installation projects all over the world and been recognised as one of Britain’s leading ecologically aware artistic forces.

The Brighton Festival, which takes place every May, is renowned for its plethora of free events. The 2017 Festival is curated by Guest Director Kate Tempest, the poet, writer and performer, alongside Festival CEO Andrew Comben who’s been the event's overall manager since 2008 (also overseeing the Brighton Dome venues all year round). This year the Festival’s theme is “Everyday Epic”.

Tommy Sissons is a 21-year-old poet, originally from Brighton, now based in London. He has won a number of poetry slam championships, and has performed across the UK at venues ranging from the Boomtown Festival to the Royal Albert Hall. His debut collection Goodnight Son was published last year. Sissons has taught classes and workshops as far afield as Germany and as close to home as the Victoria & Albert Museum. He was a regular presenter of Channel 4 music programme Four to the Floor and was commissioned by the BBC to write a Remembrance Day poem in 2015.

This morning the Brighton Festival 2017 announced its much-anticipated programme, with guest director Kate Tempest enthusiastically leading from the front. The poet-playwright-novelist has put together a programme that responds to the strange, dangerous times we live in, but which also offers up a plethora of lively entertainment.

Beth Orton’s sparsely ethereal new collection Kidsticks has been well received for marking an interesting change of direction. Last night’s Brighton Festival gig gave audiences the best of both, beginning with most of the new songs, then climaxing with some old favourites that evoked her rockier past.

A Victorian transgender celebrity is a fitting and timely subject for this Brighton Festival premiere. Writer-director Neil Bartlett turns Stella’s scandalous life into a stark horror story, marked by the regular, jarring crash of glass which sounds like splintering flashbulbs, mirror images breaking and jabbing at an older man (Richard Cant) whose hand is already slashed and bandaged, as he awaits a fatal knock on the door. A young man (Oscar Batterham), meanwhile, becomes a beautiful woman expecting a lover.