Artist Masterclass with Olivia Arthur

Olivia Arthur is leading a three-day masterclass at The Welcome Building from 6 to 8 November, a session designed to help photographers develop their practice. Arthur is the president of Magnum Photos, so this is a chance to work with someone who sits right at the top of the professional photography world. It's not a one-off talk; it runs across three days, which gives you time to actually get stuck into the work rather than just listening to a lecture.

The masterclass is part of the 'Time Machine' edition of the Bristol Photo Festival, a biennial of photography that's locally grounded but international in focus. This year's theme asks how we inhabit layered time, turning to overlooked histories, shared rituals and imagined futures, and treating photography as a space where memory, fiction and possibility coexist. It's a fairly broad prompt, and it sets the tone for the whole festival: looking at the things we usually walk past and thinking about how they fit into a bigger picture.

Because it's a biennial, the festival only comes around every two years, so this is one of the few times you'll find this kind of thing happening in Bristol. The 'Time Machine' edition brings that international focus right here, and Arthur's masterclass is one of the ways it opens up the conversation to photographers who want to do more than just look at the work on the walls. It's about the process of making, not just the finished result.

If you're a photographer looking to push your practice forward, this is a good place to start. It runs from 6 to 8 November at The Welcome Building in Bristol, as part of the Bristol Photo Festival.