PhD Festival 2026

The PhD Festival returns for its second year, bringing together 24 doctoral researchers from Camberwell, Chelsea and Wimbledon Colleges of Arts. Working at different stages of their doctoral enquiries, our researchers use creative practice to examine how we understand ourselves and the worlds we inhabit.

Across the festival, their work takes different forms, from exhibition and live performance to presentations and moving image. The work moves between the personal and the political, between memory and place, between everyday experience and larger social questions.

The festival gives audiences an opportunity to encounter this research as it develops. Some works offer traces of things that have disappeared. Others look closely at bodies, materials and environments or ask how identities and communities are formed. Together, they offer a view of the range of practice-based research taking place across Camberwell, Chelsea and Wimbledon Colleges of Arts.

This year, the programme includes a special moving-image research screening, taking place alongside the symposium at Camberwell.

Festival programme

Exhibition

Opening / Private View: Wednesday 28 October, 5 - 8pm.

Exhibition runs: 28 October - 5 November 2026. Opening times TBC.

Triangle Space, Chelsea College of Arts, 16 John Islip Street, SW1P 4JU

A group exhibition bringing together work by doctoral researchers across Camberwell, Chelsea and Wimbledon Colleges of Arts

More information about the exhibition

Symposium + Moving ImageScreening

5 November 2026, 3.30 - 7pm

Wilson Road Lecture Theatre, Camberwell College of Arts, 1 Wilson Road, SE5 8LU

Presentations and discussion from doctoral researchers, followed by a screening of moving-image research.

More info and reserve a place.

Performance

10 November 2026. Time TBC

Room AG09, Wimbledon College of Arts, Merton Hall Road, SW19 3QA

A showcase of live performance research by doctoral researchers across Camberwell, Chelsea and Wimbledon Colleges of Arts

More info and booking coming soon.

The PhD Festival 2026 offers three ways to encounter doctoral research: in the gallery, in conversation and through live practice.