About
Festivals of the Future is a network dedicated to nurturing a new generation of festival leaders and developing innovative and porous new models.
In cities and localities around the world, a new kind of festival has been emerging for some time – prioritising encounters, exchange and community. Many of these festivals were born after the recent economic crisis, emerging through adversity and evolving through an increasingly uncertain global moment. These festivals courageously explore how they can catalyse artistic expression, community co-creation and togetherness both in their localities whilst reaching to the world. Artist and citizen focused, they believe in the festival as a space to invent new futures and possibilities.
Festivals of the Future brings together organisations that are small in-scale but bold in ambition to explore and imagine the festival blueprints of tomorrow. The project assembles partners from across Europe to question and interrogate their models, collaborate and exchange.
The network was launched in 2019 by Transform (UK) and this is its first iteration as a network. Festivals of the Future is comprised of core partners Take Me Somewhere (Scotland), Parallèle (France), Short Theatre (Italy) and MIR (Greece). The project priorities collaboration and exchange between the partnership network and the wider festival community, online and in person as part of gatherings and retreats across Europe and beyond. Festivals of the Future enables the core partners to interrogate festival models of the future dependent on their interests, motivations and contexts. Enquiries that concern the network range from low carbon working, artist and community focused models, to alternative finance, co-creation and democratic leadership. During 2021, the network will work together on a shared co-commissioning and engagement framework that within an uncertain context, empowers artists and citizens to envisage a different kind of co-production and artistic exchange model.
In the first iteration of the network, the project also engages associates D-Caf (Egypt), My Wild Flag (Sweden), Les Urbaines (Switzerland), and Homo Novus (Latvia) and a wider cohort of artists, creative people and festival leaders across Europe and beyond.
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