The Future of Festivals: a Jerwood/LIFT symposium

28 Feb 2012

Southbank Centre, London, 28th February
9.30am — 6.30pm

The last decade has seen a rapid growth in the number and popularity of arts festivals in the UK. No longer is the UK arts festival calendar solely dominated by Edinburgh: from Spring to Autumn there are now increasingly popular grass roots festivals that celebrate local culture, large-scale music festivals that include theatre and dance programmes, new city-wide festivals that promote place-making and civic identity and mainstream cultural institutions wrapping up their existing programme within a festival format. And in addition we are also witnessing the rise of a new type of arts festival led and programmed by artists.

Many of these festivals emerged and grew in the economic boom of the last decade, fuelled by public sector spending, corporate sponsorship and the disposable income of audiences. Now, in different economic times, how many will survive? What strategies will festival organisers need to adopt to make themselves more sustainable? Are there now opportunities for new, more collaborative festival models? What unique role do festivals play in the development of an artist's career?

Working with LIFT, we invite you to join us for a day of dialogue and networking with festival directors, producers, theatre makers, artists and policy makers to explore these questions. With contributions from artists, international festival directors and senior policy makers including Jude Kelly, Stefan Kaegi and Tim Etchells.

Keynote presentations from:
Jude Kelly, Artistic Director of The Southbank Centre
Simon Mellor, Executive Director, Manchester International Festival and newly appointed Executive Director, Arts at Arts Council England

Key contributors:
Jennifer Cleary, Director of Creative Learning, Manchester International Festival
Mark Yeoman, Director of the Noordezoon Festival in Groningen in The Netherlands, one of Europe's most innovative and popular performing arts festivals
Stefan Kaegi, Co-founder of the German performance collective Rimini Protokoll who recently established 'Parallel Cities', a mobile artist led festival taking place in cities across the world
Andy Field, co-Director of Forest Fringe at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival
Faith Liddell, Director of Festivals Edinburgh, a new organisation working on behalf of Edinburgh's major festivals
Tim Etchells, Artistic Director of Forced Entertainment

Registration begins at 8:30am (Full timetable to be announced shortly.)

£30 + VAT (Includes lunch, refreshments and evening reception.)

10 bursaries of £50 are available to cover the travel and
accommodation costs of artists and independent producers
attending from outside London. Please email
programme@liftfestival.com for details.
Please book tickets here: futureoffestivals.eventbrite.com