The TOOLKITS SERIES Programming and Curating a Festival
Made for anyone interested in the diverse approaches and challenges associated with festivals. Its main aim is to inspire new ways of thinking, offer moments of reflection, and help tackle complex issues while curating a festival.
What is a festival? A festival offers the opportunity to subvert the norm, allowing us to exist for a moment “outside the everyday”. A celebration in an abnormal setting. While festivals are shaped—perhaps even defined—by their context (audience, budget, community, genre, history, location, mission, relationships, values, etc.), they are realised through curatorial work.
This toolkit is primarily concerned with secular festivals, i.e., open to the public, focused on showcasing and celebrating art and/or culture. Within this subsect, however, there are multiple different approaches to programming and curation—and multiple different challenges to each approach. This toolkit is for anyone interested in these diverse approaches and the challenges associated with each. We hope to inspire new ways of thinking, offer moments of reflection, and help tackle complex issues.
This toolkit provides an overview of what the curatorial process entails, examples of different practices, and helpful contextual information. Throughout the toolkit you will find contradicting examples and unanswered questions which we hope will act as starting points for creative and productive discussions.