Arts
Gallery openings, exhibitions, creative events and cultural stories.
Events
Hull Freedom Festival 2026
Hull's biggest annual arts festival returns for its free bank holiday weekend spectacular. Three days of street theatre, live music, circus, visual art and large-scale outdoor performances across the city centre and waterfront. One of the UK's largest free arts festivals.
Open Studios: Fruit Market Artists
Thirty artists working in the Fruit Market's studio buildings open their doors for a free weekend of visits. See printmakers, painters, ceramicists and textile artists at work in the warehouse spaces above Humber Street. No booking required — just turn up, walk around and talk to the people making the work.
Ferens Art Gallery: Summer Exhibition Opening
The Ferens opens its major summer exhibition with a free public evening. The gallery's programme of loan exhibitions and new commissions continues to draw visitors from across the region. Free entry, drinks provided, talks from the curators.
Listings
The Deep
One of Europe's most spectacular aquariums, built at the confluence of the Rivers Hull and Humber. Home to over 3,500 fish and 40 sharks across 87 metres of underwater tunnels and two million litres of water. An architectural landmark as well as one of the UK's great visitor attractions.
Ferens Art Gallery
Hull's flagship public gallery holds a permanent collection spanning seven centuries of European and British art, including Old Masters, portraits, marine paintings and a strong contemporary programme. Transformed during City of Culture 2017, the Ferens hosts major loan exhibitions and is free to enter.
Hull Truck Theatre
One of the UK's leading producing theatres, Hull Truck has been developing and staging new writing for over fifty years. Its Ferensway building — opened in 2009 — houses a 440-seat main auditorium and a flexible studio space. The theatre programmes a mix of world premieres, co-productions with major UK companies, and community work rooted in Hull.
Humber Street Gallery
A contemporary visual arts gallery at the heart of Hull's Fruit Market creative quarter. Humber Street Gallery presents a rolling programme of exhibitions by British and international artists, with a focus on emerging talent alongside established names. Free entry, with a well-regarded café on the ground floor.
Posts
10 Minutes with Local Mural Artist Spray-K
The artist behind Hull's most photographed wall on growing up in Bransholme, painting fast and never looking back.
The Fruit Market: How Humber Street Became Hull's Creative Quarter
Ten years ago it was a wholesale market. Today it's home to galleries, restaurants, studios and one of the most talked-about independent coffee scenes in the north.
Hull City of Culture 2017: What the Legacy Looks Like Now
Nine years on from the year that changed how the city saw itself, we look at what actually stuck.