Algorithmic Patterns in the Creative Arts.
12-14th September 2025, central Sheffield venues.
Over 40 artists exploring pattern-based music, arts and crafts through three days of concert + club performances, talks and workshops
Also check our guide to Sheffield, which includes other fine things happening over the weekend!
Friday 12th September 2025
TALKS – 10am-5:30pm Israac
Pre-booking with lunch tickets (£5+) required: tickets
Hosting diverse talks exploring the use of patterns across heritage and contemporary creative crafts, hosted in Israac. Part of the Alpaca Conference.
CONCERT – 7:30pm-10pm CADS, Arley St
Tickets from £8+ (or with £22+ weekend pass)
Seated concert mixing ancient and contemporary approaches to musical patterns in deep time. Featuring diverse instrumental and algorithmic performances from Kourosh Kanani & Matt Davies, Heavy Lifting and Prathap Ramachandra. See full details.
Saturday 13th September 2025
WORKSHOPS – 10am-midday, CADS, Arley Street
Hands-on workshops for adults curious to explore heritage and contemporary algorithmic patterns in the creative arts. Choose between Patterns for textile repair, Making a paper record, and Procedural drawing. Browse all workshops.
TALKS – 1:30pm-5:30pm, Israac
Free, pre-booking required: tickets
The Alpaca Conference continues with a session of diverse, inspiring talks.
CLUB NIGHT – 7pm-2am, Panke and Delicious Clam
Tickets £10+ (or with £22+ weekend pass)
A night of patterns over two venues. Panke’s dancefloor will host upfront pattern-based dance music, including some of the UK’s best electronic musicians and algorave artists writing code to make music to dance to. Next door, Delicious Clam will host more chilled-out performances. Featuring James Holden, badcirculation, Polinski, MYNA, Digital Selves, Interworld + many more. See full line-up + details.
Sunday 14th September 2025
WORKSHOPS – 11am-4pm, CADS, Arley Street
The daytime will be dedicated to more hands-on workshops, with a wide range of practices to try out, all suitable for adult beginners. In the morning, choose from: Kumihimo braids, Live coding computer graphics or 33 Fingering Methods for Qin, and in the afternoon, Musical improvisation with patterns or Learning to juggle with mathematics. Browse all workshops.
Drop-in – 1pm-3pm, Winter Garden
Free, just show up!
The khipu represents an example of a divergent lineage of technological development: used by diverse pre-Colombian civilizations in the Andes, it stored information in the form of knots. In this drop-by workshop in recreation with Paola Torres Núñez del Prado and Dave Griffiths, you can explore different arts technologies incorporating and inspired by khipu knots. This includes sound interfaces made by Paola as part of her doctoral research and creative practice, and their new ‘pluggable knots’ interface – large knots that can program how woven robots walk and dance around the winter garden.
CLOSING PARTY – 7pm-10:30pm, CADS, Arley Street
Tickets £8+ (or with £22+ weekend pass)
Sending off the first Alpaca Festival with an energetic mix of instrumental and electronic music. Featuring minimalist percussion duo Wood + Metal (Sarah Heneghan + Will Shaw), electric khomus + live code outfit UDAGAN, audio/visual duo Phase Transition, plus Sheffield Pattern Club/Algorave residents Eye Measure and Epiploke! See full details.