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Notts Zine Fest 2025
Saturday 8th November – 10:00-16:00
Nottingham City Library, Carrington St, Nottingham, NG1 7FH
Join Zine Fest 2025 on Saturday the 8th of November for a full building take over with one of Nottingham’s largest celebrations of visual art!
Zines form a cross section of voices and practices, bringing together illustrators, poets, designers, photographers, graffiti artists, writers, activists and comic makers are all under one roof for this full day festival. They represent grassroots publishing at its most vibrant, offering space for creativity that is personal, political, experimental and collaborative.
The festival champions self-expression and accessibility, giving everyone the tools to share their stories and ideas. With stalls, workshops, talks, performances, live illustration, readings and exhibitions, Notts Zine Fest is both a marketplace and a meeting point for independent culture to thrive.
Free, No booking required
Woman Grows Jeans Film Screening
Friday 24th October, 8pm. Online.
Maybe we can’t all grow our own jeans to support International Day of Climate Action 2025, but you CAN watch Woman Grows Jeans and learn how regenerating our clothing systems can help restore our beautiful planet.
To honour this important event, the film (only usually available to watch in cinemas) will be available to watch online on Friday 24th October at 8pm.
Festival of Resistance
Nottingham Contemporary
Sat 25 Oct 11am – 6.30pm
Sun 26 Oct 11am – 5.30pm
Join Nottingham Contemporary for a weekend dedicated to celebrating the resistance and resilience seen in our communities, showcasing the efforts of over 30 passionate, creatively minded activist collectives and individuals in the city and beyond.
Spanning a whole weekend and with input from an array of inspirational people and collectives, the Festival of Resistance will provide attendees with opportunities to;
– Share ideas, find new opportunities and be innovated
– Hear about what resistance can look like
– Delve into creative workshops
– Be inspired by local and global activism in our Radical Reading Corner
– Discover ways to get involved in local action
– Creatively contribute to collective visions for Nottingham’s network of communities
– Meet other activists and build tools for resilience in Conversation Corner
Be prepared for your hands, ears and minds to be inspired. In collaboration with prominent local collectives, activists, artists and practitioners, Festival of Resistance will be running a wide range of activities, including;
· Drop in and pre-bookable workshops (links and times TBC)
· Talkshops from collectives and activists
· In conversation sessions exploring themes of solidarity, collectivism, resistance and resilience
· Invigorating and empowering wellness mornings
· Conversation and learning circles
· A Radical Reading Corner
Find out more and book your workshops here
New Art Exchange: IN PLACE OF FEAR BY SIMEON BARCLAY
10 Oct, 2025 – 24 Jan, 2026
In this new exhibition Simeon Barclay draws upon a rich vein of pop cultural sources, producing works that activate complex cultural histories, whilst exploring the ways in which we navigate identity, both imposed or self-curated. Combining a diverse range of media, Barclay creates reductive, sophisticated works that engage with aspects of aesthetics, British culture, subjectivity and memory.
After spending his formative years working in the manufacturing industry in the North of England, Barclay would attend night school, eventually obtaining an MFA from Goldsmiths University, London (UK). As a youth he became preoccupied with fashion, citing its vitality as a conduit for both embellishment and resistance. Fashion’s social and economic contexts were also relevant, providing a dichotomy between the artist’s fascination with Vogue magazine, a periodical whose glamour and theatricality provided aspirational imagery, and the stark contrast that was his everyday reality and life working in a factory. These insights would later foster the impetus for his involvement in various subcultural movements whose symbolic and alternative modes of expression defined themselves in opposition to social norms.
LUSTRE
BEAUTIFUL THINGS FOR YOU AND YOUR HOME
Craft Fair – Lakeside Arts
Fri 7th – Sun 9th Nov 2025
Our much-anticipated, nationally renowned contemporary craft fair returns this autumn.
It’s a must-visit event for lovers of handmade, beautiful things. Discover over 50 of the UK’s top designer-makers and craft artists, carefully selected to showcase the very best in covetable, collectable craft – from jewellery, textiles and ceramics to glass, leather, wood and more.
It’s a rare chance to meet and chat with talented makers, learn about their inspiration, and commission or buy original work directly from them. With Christmas just around the corner, this is the perfect time to find unique gifts for your loved ones – and maybe treat yourself too!
Nottingham Halloween Festival
Its in Nottingham
Get ready for monstrous fun this October half-term – our favourite rooftop monsters are returning from Saturday 25 October – Sunday 2 November 2025. There will be some new monsters to spot this year, as the crazy creatures take up residence on the rooftops of high-street shops and businesses across the city. To help you find them, we’ve created a map, which you will soon be able to pick up from Nottingham Tourism Centre on Smithy Row.
Monster Mash at Nottingham Castle
Join us on Friday 31 October from 10am to 5pm* for a day of ghostly delights, family fun, and Halloween magic at the Monster Mash! Enjoy music and dancing in the bandstand with our family-friendly DJ, free face painting for kids, spooky games, crafts, and tasty treats from food and drink stalls.
Get ready for some hair-raising fun with the Strolling Bones Parade! This eerie yet playful walkabout performance, created by Walk the Plank, features lively skeleton puppets dancing to the infectious sounds of the Fat Cat Brass Band.
Tickets*: £2 for each adult and £1 per child under the age of 15 year, which includes entry to the Castle!
Click here for tickets – Adults – £2. U’15s – £1.
METRONOME NOTTINGHAM
Just the Tonic has been producing comedy shows in Nottingham for over 25 years. We have now found a new home in Metronome. Described by many comedians as one of the best comedy venues in the country. With Just the Tonic’s notorious reputation for the best comedy line ups in the country… you can be sure you are getting one of the best nights in town…
We bring you four different acts at every Standard Saturday show including some of the best up & coming comperes and headliners from the UK & abroad. We open from 8pm so you can have a pre show chat and grab some drinks from the bar. Our show starts at 9pm, so you get your laughs in then make further plans for the night. Or catch the Early shoes from 6pm.
Eureka Day
by Jonathan Spector
Sat 25 Oct – Sat 15 Nov
Welcome to the Eureka Day Elementary School!
In the heart of the San Francisco Bay Area, it’s an institution that prides itself on ensuring every voice is heard, and every child is welcome. But friendships are challenged when an outbreak of mumps reveals that not everyone is on board with the school’s vaccine policy.
The regional premiere of Jonathan Spector’s Tony Award-winning razor-sharp comedy sees the school’s Executive Committee of well-meaning parents and teachers fall apart, as their progressive paradise crumbles and meetings are derailed by parental hysteria. This laugh-out-loud play will strike a universal chord, showing how even the most enlightened communities are just one epidemic away from complete turmoil.
Price: Tickets from £14.50. Find out about our pricing here.
Flat | Exhibition
EXHIBITION: 13 September – 29 November 2025
OPENING TIMES: Thursday–Saturday, 10AM–6PM, or by appointment.
Primary, 33 Seely Road, Nottingham, NG7 1NU, United Kingdom
Flat is an exhibition that is like two sides of the same coin.
Through material play and creative research, the show will feature work by Primary resident and member artists—Louisa Chambers, Craig Fisher, Lynn Fulton and Sam Metz—across Gallery 1 and 2, exploring the word ‘flat’ in two distinct contexts.
On one side of the coin, the works interpret ‘flatness’ from multiple vantage points, particularly in relation to spatial perception. Be it the collapsing, flattening, and reconstruction of sculptural form or the smoothness of a surface. In the 1960s and 1970s, art criticism referred to flatness as the smoothness and absence of curvature or surface detail in two-dimensional artwork, particularly modernist painting. American artist Donald Judd’s ‘Specific Objects’ (1964 text) is interesting to bring into the fold, using the exhibition to put into contention what Judd wrote in Arts Yearbook: ‘Almost all paintings are spatial in one way or another’.
If flatness is on one side, on the other side, the project will test and materially play with the idea of the word ‘flat’ in another sense: a form of housing. The term ‘flat’ originates from the Old Scottish/Old English word ‘flet’, which means an interior space of a home. Some believe the term has persisted because most flats are located on a single floor, meaning there are no stairs inside the accommodation. The concept of a flat is deeply rooted in British housing tradition, starting with mansion flats in 1800s London, flats rebuilt after the interwar period, council estates—Nottingham was one of the largest builders of council housing in the country until the 1970s—and housing for the working-class that’s historically affordable, and included communal areas. However, with the rise of studentification in Radford (where Primary is based) and the ongoing cost-of-living crisis, the word ‘flat’ and the socio-politics of being a ‘resident’ in some form of dwelling, be it a studio or a home, could take on new meaning.
Primary is then thinking further to how arts organisations are borderlands—bridges between civic space and urban renewal/planning, and how the art institution and public artwork can sit (un)comfortably in between, like Konsthall C (initiated in 2004, a year before our organisation), a cross between all three, located in a former communal laundry in Hökarängen, Sweden; and then us, housed in a former school (c. 1885 until 2005) that became occupied by artists—becoming Primary.
Community Kitchen and Free Screening
New Art Exchange
Upcoming Community Kitchen events:
6th November: The Sri Lankan Kitchen
4th December: The Creole Kitchen
8th January: The South Korean Kitchen
Come and eat with us! At the Corner Café in the New Art Exchange, we serve up plant-based dishes from a different culture on the first Thursday of every month.
This month we are excited to present an evening of Sri Lankan inspired food for you to enjoy.
Meals are served from 5 pm and drinks are available to buy at the café.
There’s also a free screening of Dheepan (2015) at 6:30pm (please book separately here) and our gallery will be open until late for you to explore.
Everyone is welcome – no one turned away for lack of funds. Sit down, enjoy a great meal and get to know your local community!
Please note that The Community Kitchen is first-come, first-served. We prepare a limited number of portions to minimise food waste. While booking a ticket helps us estimate how many people to expect and promotes the event, it does not guarantee that you will receive food. We recommend arriving early to avoid disappointment.
Our food is always vegan-friendly at Community Kitchen events and allergy information is available on request. Feel free to contact us with any questions you may have.