Worlds Largest Sand Scuplture Festival - Brighton

Around 60 artists from all over the world congregated in Brighton the summer of 2006 to create one of the world’s largest sand sculpture festivals.

From 1st June to 10th September, Brighton will be home to the Colosseum, the Pantheon. Double click on any picture to enlarge it.

The sculptures are made purely from sand and water and can easily withstand winds up to Force 7. During the first four days of the festival visitors can watch the artists in action as they put the final touches to their magnificent creations.

To make beautiful, steep sand sculptures, you need a kind of sand that you can pile up. The shape of the grain is important here. Try piling up some marbles

and you will soon see what happens. If you pile blocks or dice, then there is no problem. The same applies to sculpture sand. The pieces of gravel on Brighton beach (there is no sand), for example, is as round as marbles due to the tides and the movement of the waves. This makes it hard to build with. The ideal sculpture sand has an angular grain and is less eroded. The ideal sand for sculpting comes from the River Maas and is carried with the water from the Alps. These mineral sand grains still look like dice of various sizes, which can fit together.

When a sand sculpture is built outdoors, it can stay there for months. So far, the Dutch record is 1 year and 9 months: a sand sculpture in Madurodam, which even survived the winter. The outdoor record in California is 2 years. If a sculpture is built indoors, then it can remain intact for decades, if not touched.