Open for Art 2026: Blood Sweat & Tears

Visit the exhibition at Openhand Open Space studios throughout the festival. Just drop in.

Weekdays 2-6pm

Weekend 12-6pm

This year The Engine Room turns 10. To mark this moment, that join us to delve deep into our archive—of new work, of process, and of ideas not yet dreamt up. It will be both retrospective and speculative: a space to reflect, and a space to imagine forward. The programme will unfold across a series of shared experiences. We will hold feasts, dance and engage and plant. Drawing rooms will open as intimate spaces for conversation and collective thinking—places where ideas can be sketched, tested, and held in common.

Alongside this, a series of talks will explore the importance of grassroots projects in bridging into wider cultural spaces—asking how they sustain, challenge, and reshape the cultural landscape.

This is both a reflection and a provocation: an invitation to honour the labour, creativity, and collective energy that have brought us here—and to imagine what comes next.

About the artists

The Engine Room is an independent arts and mental health collective initiated by a group of creatives facing mental health challenges across local communities in Reading

Our approach is to create spaces for individuals to access independent, free-thinking creative experiences of quality, facilitated by artists. These experiences promote empowerment, recovery, and healthy human development within a nurturing and safe environment across the local community.

All the events at the Open for Art Festival are free to attend, there is an option to add a donation to help support the festival if you would like to and feel able to.

If you can no longer attend please let us know as places are limted and we can offer your space to someone else.

OPEN FOR ART

19 JUNE - 28 JUNE 2026

REFLECT This year marks 10 years of Open for Art — a decade of artists, makers, communities, ideas and shared experiences in Reading’s largest town centre creative festival. As we celebrate this milestone, our theme invites everyone to pause and consider how creativity emerges from people coming together — experimenting, making, and reflecting. Our theme for 2026 is REFLECT.

For 10 days, we’re inviting Reading to slow down and seek out pop-up art in shops and businesses, encounter artists as they work, take part in creative sessions, and join conversations about how reflection shapes artistic practice.

Come and REFLECT with us this summer.

Know what’s Happening Next — before everyone else does.

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Host or Publisher Jelly