Format Festival 2025

FORMAT International Photography Festival returns in March 2025, transforming the city of Derby into a vibrant showcase of the best photography and lens-based media that represent the theme of ‘CONFLICTED’.

Save the date for the FORMAT25, from 13 – 30 March 2025 in Derby City Centre. 

Launch weekend: 13 – 16 March Venues include QUAD, 19 Chapel St, Museum of Making, Electric Daisy, W. W. Winters, Small print, Dubrek gallery, Banks Mill Studios, University of Derby, LCB Depot Leicester, East Meets West (TBC), Dancing Through Time (TBC) & artworks on our website!

CONFLICTED:

For the 2025 edition the festival theme is ‘Conflicted’. Set more as a guide rather than a rule, the theme was intended to prompt responses from artists across the globe, via the FORMAT25 Open Call, to propose work that reflects multiple facets, factions, hopes and fears of our world, today. ‘Conflicted’ is a prescient theme; the world we live in today is as ever convulsing with change. Throughout history societies, civilizations and cultures have been subject to division and catastrophic change amidst periods of stability and peace. Recent times have borne witness to what would seem to be one monumental change and challenge after the other – a seemingly endless slew of emergencies including the Covid pandemic, a cost-of-living crisis, catastrophic wars, coupled with a sense – across the globe – that political populism is becoming the norm. Consensus, agreement and simple kindness can at times seem to be at a premium. The world is a conflicted place. Yet, photography is a medium that can have an uncanny ability to speak truth to power, to succinctly and powerfully reflect the world about us, and to make us stop, think and reset. Who better to help us through this time, to guide us and to help us understand, than the artist, the photographer; the filmmaker? 

Artists in order of video:

Felicity Hammond, 5 Open Call artists: Jenna Garrett, Christopher Gregory-Rivera, Sujata Setia, Natalie Lo Lai Lai, Thero Makepe, John Blakemore, Francis Augusto, W. W. Winters, Jordan Baseman, Alicia Bruce, Associazione La Casa della Memoria Impresa Sociale, Michael Ormerod, Anton Shevelov, Thana Faroq, Alena Grom, Artem Humilevskyi, Evgeny Maloletka, Taras Bychko, Lesia Maruschak, Maxim Dondyuk, Mykhaylo Palinchak, Olena Tytarenko, Roman Pyatkovka, Sergey Melnitchenko, Anton Shevelov, Babeworld, Artem Novatsky, Dancing Through Time / Roger Smith, Yelyzaveta Derzhovytska, Gemma Marmalade/ Stephen Watson, Xueyi Huang (Snow), Erin Todd, Derby Moor DM Lens lAB2

FORMAT International Photography Festival is organised by and is a partnership between QUAD and the University of Derby. QUAD is funded and supported by Arts Council England and Derby City Council, with additional support from a range of national and international partners.