ECAS Working Period I

Experimenting in new forms and models of presenting artworks and engaging audiences

01.06.2010 - 31.11.2011

The cultural sector is increasingly fluid, changing at a bewildering pace. Over the past 15 years it’s been possible to see the rise of a new generation of cultural festivals, which increasingly reflect and represent the fast-paced cultural sector of today. We propose these festivals can be viewed as a new kind of cultural institution, which, unlike other traditional cultural institutions such as the museum, have the versatility to respond and adapt very rapidly to emerging artistic forms and trends. They engage with wholly new themes, formats and art forms each year, or within a single year's programme.

For the co-applicants, festivals are viewed as 'living laboratories'. They are conceived and designed as playgrounds or experimental spaces where new cultural forms, new technologies, and new modes of audience engagement can be presented and evaluated.

Festivals are characterised by 'eventness', that is to say, temporality, and structured cultural programmes. This event-based approach is increasingly being adopted by other institutions, such as museums, as an effective approach to organising their programmes.

Festivals are a place where different forms and communities cross-fertilise, acting as a meeting place between audiences, cultural workers, artists and other stakeholders. Crucially, they are a space where new cultural forms, methods and technology prototypes may be tested and evaluated with a live audience. They also offer the ability to give attention (including media attention) to the topic that the festival explores in a particular year.

The Working Period I programme will be coordinated by co-applicants DISK, Futureeveverything, and CynetArt. FutureEverything collaborates with Lancaster University and has formalised the 'living laboratory' methodology, and has been judged to be an example of 'world class research' in the Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) 2008. DISK/ CTM is a melting pot for Europe's trans-national creatives, helping to foment new cultural forms. CynetART is experiments with social media and interactive art in new formats for cultural engagement.