A biennial festival inspired by Portland will entertain residents and visitors alike over the next nine days. Joanna Davis speaks to artists and organisers to find out more about the b-side festival.

A multimedia arts festival that puts Portland in the spotlight begins tomorrow.

b-side Festival returns with nine days of contemporary art from September 8 to 16.

Portland will play host to a varied programme of exciting new commissions from a diverse collection of artists.

The festival works in harmony with the island’s unique history, geology and character and the artworks range from films to performances to installations.

Quirkiness is the name of the game - for example Joe Borez will create The Portland Lookalike Agency as a response to the perceived idea that celebrity status is a short cut to prosperity.

His fictional agency will provide celebrity lookalikes, whose fictional staff are drawn from the real residents of Portland. The 'agency' is showing as a film at the Royal Manor Theatre.

Jez said: "The Portland lookalike agency is a film made by El Borez and Jim Dour. The agency is set in the near future and the staff are the very real residents of Portland. The themes of the film are identity, social mobility, and shark attacks!"

Another highlight of the festival will be Miss High Leg Kick’s Portland Promettes, a troupe of artists who create movable, flexible routines through synchronised dance pieces, audience interaction, performances and comedy, which will be perfect for the whole family.

The Portland Promettes will perform at Portland Bill and Chesil Cove on selected times over the course of the festival.

Event organisers have commissioned an ambitious programme of artists, to create pieces which will be scattered in the island’s unique locations and venues.

Festival producer Sandy Kirkby said the festival makes use of 'hidden' locations on Portland.

She said: “b-side is an outdoor arts festival that explores secret, hidden and unused locations across the island.

"Visitors are made to feel like part of what they’re witnessing and get involved. Portland is a unique location which is celebrated through the eyes of the artists commissioned and this year’s playful and emotive selections will bring visitors to explore hidden parts of the island.

"We’re looking forward to entertaining residents of Portland and visitors from all over the world during the festival.”

The enigmatic Ghost Tunnels at The Verne High Angle Battery are the inspiration for Raphael Daden’s light based artworks with EL wire, giving visitors the chance to explore and happen upon illuminated sculptures in the dark.

Laura Hopes has created a soundscape in a former quarry next to the Young Offenders' Institution (YOI), re-animating the history and stories of the dramatic Portland Stadium Bowl and giving visitors the sensation of being on a football pitch cheered on by the roar of 5,000 ghostly supporters, where now there only stand terraces of trees.

The football theme was a natural fit for the site as it was regularly used until the 1990s by residents of the YOI on Portland, and in fact was converted to that purpose (from quarry pit to sports stadium) by their forebears, in the 1930s, under the guidance of a Borstal PT instructor, Burt Bridges.

Laura was struck by the grandeur and emptiness of the bowl in comparison with its heyday, filled with cheering fans and this seemed to reflect the stories of those that used to play there. She wanted to reanimate the site, and turn this slightly forlorn corner into an exciting, awe-inspiring and dramatic place to be. During the festival local and other teams have been invited to play to the sonic ‘crowds’.

Sound has been important within Laura’s previous work, for example sounds created from china clay orbs cast from the raw materials obtained on site in the Imerys pits she used as a location in her work Lacuna, Colour of Distance, and the gentle collective chimes of the bells used by participants in her film Crazywell.

But this is the first time she has used sound on this scale.

She said: "I was really struck during my previous visit to the festival in 2016 at how many fascinating natural and man-made sites there are on Portland and how the audience is invited to explore and discover their own routes around the island and the artworks nestled within it.

"Every corner seems to offer an opportunity for artists to respond with site-specific work and I'm thrilled to have secured such a majestic location for my sound piece.

"I'm looking forward to other festival events, especially the promettes visiting the stadium on the afternoon of Friday 8 and I'm intrigued to see the live-casting produced by Katie Surridge and Stephen Coles."

Challenging the pressing issue of air pollution, London-based artist Leni Dothan will create Portland’s Pollution Rehab Centre, a site specific project when Portland will be transformed into a rehab centre for air polluted sculptures made in London.

Leni's work will be set up at High Angle Battery.

Artists Katie Surridge and Stephen Coles will join forces to fabricate and construct a site-specific bronze foundry revisiting ancient techniques. This stack furnace will be a sculpture in its own right, where overheard conversations and stories will be cast in bronze to make plaques, casting the mundane in a luxurious material.

Artist Farhad Berahman will build and use an Afghan Camera Box or kamra-e-faoree, a traditional method of capturing memories by veteran street photographers in Afghanistan and Iran to capture photographs and will instantly grant an individual copy to visitors within minutes of processing the image.

*b-side festival, various locations on Portland, September 8 to 16. See b-side.org.uk for timings and locations of events.