Atomica Digital

Strawberry Fair in Cambridge is a free, annual event run for the public. It is held on Midsummer Common, a space of grass in the centre of the city surrounded by trees and next to the river: also home to Midsummer Fair that started back in Medieval times and one of the oldest fairs of the country. It was established by a group of university students in 1974 as an alternative festival in Cambridge that played on carnivalesque features and political protest, rapidly growing in popularity. It became a significant event on the calendar for Cambridge, especially in my family as we have always dressed up. People come from all over the country and the world for the festival, but it caused widespread disruption in the city and had to be shut down around 2009/2010 as the event proved to be difficult to control (for example due to drug use, violence at the train station, excessive camping). In the return of Strawberry Fair as re-branded family event from 2011 onward, measures have been put in...

Lighthouse's November open session, as part of the 16-25 year old's Viral project, featured a live performance from the Informals, followed by a Q&A session with local rap artists Phonetic and Kemastry. It discussed and portrayed youth culture of today, from Russia to Britain, in a digital age. The Informals (a musical duo from Russia and the Netherlands) presented an audiovisual spectacle compiling documentary-style shots along with sounds created on location. Their work represents the lives of a youth subculture in Russia and is never a finished piece as the performance is created though improvised selection of their material. The footage, appearing as chosen during the show, depicts scenes of a group of young people in the outskirts of Murmansk, a port city some 24 hours away from the capital. The youth are understood as "digital natives" using the Internet to inspire their everyday lives, such as through cosplay. Congregating in the abandoned military b...