The OffBeat Folk Film Festival and OffBeat Art Club 2026 (Due Feb. 15)
The OffBeat Folk Film Festival and OffBeat Art Club 2026
Deadline: February 15th, 2026
Film:
The OffBeat Folk Film Festival is coming back for 2026! Join us from the 2nd to the 14th of May 2026 where we'll be hosting events at venues such as Cecil Sharp House, The Mildmay Club, The Walthamstow Trades Hall and The Moth Club, with many more to be announced.
Last year we sold out every single one of our 10 events and we're looking forward to hosting even more film screenings, talks and performances across 12 days in London.
OffBeat Folk Film Festival is the first of its kind and we are looking for the best films about folk and working culture in Britain. We welcome emerging and established filmmakers to apply and are looking for documentary, narrative, experimental or music videos that take a closer look at the lesser known aspects of British culture. This could be a film about the Mari Lywd to a profile of your local pub. If you’ve been to one of our screenings in Walthamstow you know we love archival documentaries, so we welcome old films as well as new.
We can't wait to watch your films!
Art Club:
OffBeat Art Club is a group exhibition and open call celebrating the weird and wonderful artwork which might not always find a home in exhibitions. It brings together artists who are working in craft, print, painting, ephemera and object-based work about the vernacular and the slightly off-centre.
The exhibition coincides with London Craft Week and is part of OffBeat’s wider Folk Film Festival. It’s taking place in collaboration with Staffordshire St.
The exhibition sits within OffBeat’s wider interest in how offbeat culture keeps surfacing in contemporary visual practice, not as nostalgia, but as something open to everyone.
This exhibition is curated in collaboration with Wilfrid Wood.
We are inviting submissions from artists and makers working in:
Craft-led or materially focused practices
Print, drawing, painting and mixed media
Film stills, archival material and image-based work
Small sculptural objects or wall-based works
Work that connects to folk culture, place, ritual, labour or the handmade
We are particularly interested in work that feels thoughtful rather than polished, and in practices that sit slightly outside dominant commercial or institutional aesthetics. We want to use the OffBeat Art Club as a chance to platform under-represented artists making work in any medium