Arts Festivals Summit 2026: Being in the room: Who gets to shape the conversation?
Alumni of The Festival Academy play a vital role in EFA’s vibrant festivals community. In this piece, Krishnapriya Ramamoorthy, from India and based in Wales in the UK, comes back on the reasons that brought her to the Arts Festivals Summit 2026 in Budva and her experience.
I am Krishnapriya Ramamoorthy, a dancer and Director of Paallam Arts, an outdoor arts organisation based in Wales. Through Paallam, I work with artists across Wales and internationally, creating opportunities for artistic exchange and developing our own outdoor arts festival.
I attended the Arts Festivals Summit in Budva with a curiosity to experience the wider international festival landscape, meet people working in different cultural contexts and understand where the work we are building in Wales sits within that larger picture.
As someone developing an organisation and producing a festival, much of my time is spent making things happen, with little opportunity to step outside the immediate demands of the work. Budva offered that space to listen, observe, exchange ideas and reflect.
What made the experience particularly valuable was the people and the conversations.
The Summit brought together festival directors, producers and cultural practitioners from different parts of the world. While the formal sessions offered interesting perspectives, some of the most meaningful exchanges happened through conversations with peers – hearing about their journeys, the festivals they were building and the different environments in which they worked.
My own journey has taken me through different artistic and cultural landscapes. I trained in dance in India, worked professionally in the South Asian arts sector in the United States, and now work within the Welsh outdoor arts sector. Experiencing these different cultural infrastructures has shaped my understanding of artistic practice, access and opportunities, and naturally influenced the perspectives I brought to Budva.
There were conversations that resonated with my experiences and others that challenged my thinking. Discussions around artistic freedom, cultural infrastructure, access and the relationship between art and politics made me reflect on how differently we can approach the same questions depending on where we come from and the environments in which we work.
What stayed with me most, however, was the openness with which these conversations took place.
What makes opportunities to participate in international spaces meaningful is the openness of the space itself: a willingness to hear different perspectives, engage with unfamiliar ideas, welcome conversations that challenge established ways of thinking
That was something I genuinely appreciated about Budva.
There was warmth and openness in the way people engaged with one another. I experienced a willingness to listen, exchange ideas and consider perspectives that were not always familiar. There were moments when someone would respond to a point I had raised by saying they agreed, found it interesting or had not considered the issue in that way before.
Those exchanges reminded me that being heard does not necessarily mean being agreed with. What matters is having the opportunity to contribute a perspective and knowing that others are willing to engage with it.
Coming from an underrepresented background and working across different artistic environments, I valued being able to participate not simply as a representative of a particular background, but as an artist, producer and festival-maker with experiences, questions and ideas to contribute.
Equally, I was there to listen and learn. Some conversations reinforced my thinking, while others introduced me to approaches, I had not previously considered. The experience reminded me of the value of stepping outside our familiar environments and engaging with a wider range of perspectives.
As someone who is creating spaces through our festival, this experience also made me reflect on the environments we create for others. Bringing artists, audiences and practitioners together is only one part of festival-making. Equally important is the openness we encourage, the perspectives we invite and the conversations we make possible.
I returned to Wales with a broader understanding of the international festival landscape and a clearer sense of how our work connects to that wider world. It gave me an opportunity to think beyond the immediate demands of producing a festival and consider how we position our work, develop relationships and create an environment in which different ideas and artistic practices can grow.
I did not return with a particular model to replicate, but with new connections, a wider perspective and a deeper appreciation of genuine exchange.
Being in the room matters. But what made Budva meaningful was the openness of that room – the willingness to listen, to be challenged and to engage with perspectives beyond our own. That is what allows a gathering to become something more than an event, and a conversation to continue beyond it.
Krishnapriya Ramamoorthy took part in the 25th edition of the Festival Academy’s Atelier for Young Festival Managers from 20 to 26 November 2025 in Chemnitz, Germany, hosted by and co-organised with Chemnitz European Capital of Culture 2025.
