[Festivals Stories] Compilation: Going digital boosted innovation and creativity
Some festivals took the best out of moving to a digital format.
They created innovative projects that turned the festival’s standard production upside down making it even more outstanding.
EUROSHORTS Young Filmmakers International Film Festival
Gdańsk, Poland
29/11/2021-05/12/2021
At the Euroshorts Festival we are most proud of our Filmstudio Space - a virtual film studio for everyone to discover via Internet. This project was created during the pandemic and lockdown in Poland, by filmmakers and engineers. It is a 3D model of a film production studio being also a cultural centre at the same time. This is the cultural space of our dreams and it's partially interactive. If we would be rich, we would build it as a real building. But even in the virtual world the magic works.
More information: http://filmstudio.space
Kilowatt Festival
Sansepolcro, Italy
16/07/2021-24/07/2021
"Residenze Digitali is a project which has been developed since 2021 by Armunia (Rosignano Marittimo) and CapoTrave/Kilowatt Festival (Sansepolcro) together with Anghiari Dance Hub (Anghiari), AMAT (Ancona), Spazio Rossellini for ATCL Lazio (Rome), L'Arboreto â Teatro Dimora (Mondaino), La Corte Ospitale (Rubiera), Teatro della Tosse (Genoa) and ZONA K (Milan).
The aim of the project is to encourage the artists to explore the digital space, as further or new prospects of their research.
Each year we launch a call, in order to select creations developed specifically for the digital environment. We are not looking for live streaming or videos of shows that are created for a live performance on stage. Instead, we desire to invest in projects conceived for digital spaces, which investigate interactive relationships with the audience.
During the working progress, the selected works are supervised by all the partners together with three Italian experts in digital studies: Laura Gemini, Anna Maria Monteverdi and Federica Patti.
A final online sharing, open to the public, called “The Digital Residences Week”, takes place in November.
The digital residencies do not want to take the place of the live creative residencies in our venues; they represent new opportunities for creation and open up new challenges, producing innovative artistic contents and supporting new researches and languages in performing arts."
More information: http://www.residenzedigitali.it
Festival Europäische Kirchenmusik Schwäbisch Gmünd
Schwäbisch Gmünd, Germany
16/07/2021 - 08/08/2021
In 2020 we had to cancel the whole programme of the Festival Europäische Kirchenmusik Schwäbisch Gmünd (Germany) - we asked the artists of 2020 to send us a short movie with greetings to the audience and we played these videos on different screens in the city to ask for donations. Nearly €8.000 were donated for the international artists. In a second step, we organised alternative, corona compliant events like a concert for all bells in our town - played by 17 musicians. Many people came to listen while standing on the places of Schwäbisch Gmünd. We also organised "Guerilla" concerts with little ensembles in front of the station, supermarkets or in beer gardens. A Sound-Performance in the biggest church and an orchestra concert in the city garden closed the special acts of 2020.
To sum up, people couldn't come to the festival, so the festival came to the people. Fortunately, in 2021 many of the planned concerts could take place - many of them "open air" or in bigger locations. However, a few weeks before it was still not sure that this would be possible, so we had the idea of creating an "Online-Organ-Escape-Room" because we celebrated the "year of the organ" in Germany and well, we are a festival for sacred music. Therefore, this Escape-Game set a focus on the four wonderful churches and organs in our historical town. We went online with the escape game in the middle of July, beginning the 2021 festival.
More information: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YiXILar0Iro&t=302s
Festival Artes à Vila
Batalha, Portugal
25 & 26 June 2020
The Festival Artes a Vila can be proud of having held its 2020 edition only with online broadcasting without in-person audience and later on TV broadcasting. In 2021, it went hybrid: it kept both the registrations online and activities with the public being present physically. The programme was designed to combine traditions with ethnographic and popular projects and emerging artists of the new Portuguese musical scene. The festival will keep its online format in order to continue to reach new audiences in different parts of the world.
More information: https://www.youtube.com/c/Fest...
