Brighton's Orchestra of Sound and Light mixes music, film, movement, and poetry in concerts full of joyful participation, while giving voice to ideas about perfection in nature, borders, conflict and climate.

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Arts Council England has awarded a grant for OSL's 2025 project, Beachy Head, through the ACE's National Lottery Project Grants scheme, inspired by Charlotte Smith's 1803 radical and epic poem.

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OSL is now touring from West to East Sussex in June and July 2025 with its new project From Felpham to Beachy Head, music, landscape, people, poetry, funded by Arts Council England.

 

Charlotte Smith's epic poem Beachy Head combines images of the iconic South Downs with reflections on big themes such as nature's power, human conflict, borders, individual courage, climate and change, memories of times past, and peace and reconciliation. 

 

Inspired by this extraordinary poem, OSL is developing place-based, interdisciplinary creative music and song-writing methods and approaches through a new project with young people in Sussex schools, mainly aged 14 to 15. It aims to use song-writing, drama and dance to show how big themes in Charlotte Smith's visionary poem are relevant to young people's voices today. 

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A final concert in Towner Eastbourne, linked to the Sussex Modernism exhibition, will feature the songs of professional composers Shirley Thompson, Rowland Sutherland, Evelyn Ficarra, and Ed Hughes, from OSL's award winning 2024 album, including readings and films, and a new composite work inspired by Charlotte Smith and the work done on the tour, called Brilliant Rays of Arrowy Light.

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OSL created the South Downs Songbook project - a music and composition project in schools and colleges - with composers Ed Hughes, Evelyn Ficarra, Rowland Sutherland and Shirley J Thompson in summer 2022. Featuring a free digital resource pack for GCSE and A Level Music students and teachers. Full details here. 

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