If it's May, it must be Brighton Festival time. This year the Brighton Festival celebrates its 40th anniversary and claims to be the biggest arts festival in England . The Edinburgh Festival is the biggest in the UK . The Festival really took off in 1987 when, under the direction of Gavin Henderson, it started to feature art on its collectable posters and the front cover of its brochure. The 1987 cover featured Nick Orsborn , an artist still very much active in Brighton , and showing this year at 51 Wilbury Road . Other past cover artists still exhibiting include Gary Goodman, Victor Stuart Graham, Katty McMurray and Jon Mills.

The Open Houses started in 1982 with Ned Hoskins of Fiveways opening his doors to the public, and Open Houses have happily been an integral part of the Festival since – the one thing that makes the Brighton Festival unique. In 2002, however, things took a turn for the worse, when Director Nick Dodds announced that it was to be split – into a main festival, based around events at the Dome complex, and a Festival Fringe. He based his model along the lines of the Edinburgh Festival, where the Fringe is independent of (but considerably larger than) the official International Festival. The Open Houses weren't happy about being sidelined into an artificial Fringe so in that year a compromise was reached: an insert called Brighton Festival Open, containing the Open Houses, was bound into the main brochure. continue