An arts festival is a
festival
A festival is an event ordinarily celebrated by a community and centering on some characteristic aspect or aspects of that community and its religion or cultures. It is often marked as a local or national holiday, mela, or eid. A festival c ...
that can encompass a wide range of art forms including music, dance, film, fine art, literature, poetry and isn't solely focused on visual arts. Arts festivals may feature a mixed program that include music, literature, comedy, children's entertainment, science, or street theatre, and are typically presented in venues over a period of time ranging from as short as a day or a weekend to a month.
Each event within the program is usually separate.
Arts festivals are largely curated by an artistic director who handles the organizations' artistic direction and can encompass different genres, including
fringe theater festivals that are open access, making arts festivals distinctive from greenfield festivals, which typically are weekend camping festivals such as
Glastonbury
Glastonbury (, ) is a town and civil parish in Somerset, England, situated at a dry point on the low-lying Somerset Levels, south of Bristol. The town, which is in the Mendip district, had a population of 8,932 in the 2011 census. Glastonbury ...
, and Visual Arts Festivals, which concentrate on the visual arts.
Another type of arts festivals are music festivals, which are outdoor musical events usually spanning a weekend, featuring a number of bands and musical genres including pop, rock, heavy-metal, and more. Since the 1960s, world-music festivals have become popular in a variety of countries. The most well-recognized music festival was
Woodstock
Woodstock Music and Art Fair, commonly referred to as Woodstock, was a music festival held during August 15–18, 1969, on Max Yasgur's dairy farm in Bethel, New York, United States, southwest of the town of Woodstock, New York, Woodstock. ...
, which took place in 1969 in Bethel, New York. It was attended by 400,000 people and featured performances by The Who, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, and the Grateful Dead.
History
Probably the two oldest arts festivals are located in England. The
Three Choirs Festival
200px, Worcester cathedral
200px, Gloucester cathedral
The Three Choirs Festival is a music festival held annually at the end of July, rotating among the cathedrals of the Three Counties (Hereford, Gloucester and Worcester) and originally featu ...
in the West of England was established as a "yearly musical assembly" by 1719. The other is the
Norfolk and Norwich Festival
Norfolk & Norwich Festival is an arts festival held annually in Norwich, England.
It is one of the oldest city festivals in England, having been held since 1824 and tracing its roots back further to 1772. It was initially conceived as a fundra ...
which first took place in 1772. The largest arts festival in England today is the
Brighton Festival Fringe
Brighton Fringe is an open-access arts festival held annually in Brighton, England. It is the largest annual arts festival in England and one of the largest fringe festivals in the world. The programme of 2018 included 1008 events at over 166 v ...
.
Leading arts festivals include the
Edinburgh Festival
__NOTOC__
This is a list of arts and cultural festivals regularly taking place in Edinburgh, Scotland.
The city has become known for its festivals since the establishment in 1947 of the Edinburgh International Festival and the Edinburgh Fe ...
in
Edinburgh
Edinburgh ( ; gd, Dùn Èideann ) is the capital city of Scotland and one of its 32 Council areas of Scotland, council areas. Historically part of the county of Midlothian (interchangeably Edinburghshire before 1921), it is located in Lothian ...
,
Adelaide Festival of Arts
The Adelaide Festival of Arts, also known as the Adelaide Festival, an arts festival, takes place in the South Australian capital of Adelaide in March each year. Started in 1960, it is a major celebration of the arts and a significant cultural ...
in
Adelaide
Adelaide ( ) is the capital city of South Australia, the state's largest city and the fifth-most populous city in Australia. "Adelaide" may refer to either Greater Adelaide (including the Adelaide Hills) or the Adelaide city centre. The dem ...
, the
Biennale of Sydney
The Biennale of Sydney is an international festival of contemporary art, held every two years in Sydney, Australia. It is a large and well-attended contemporary visual arts event in the country. Alongside the Venice and São Paulo biennales and ...
,
Festival d'Avignon
The ''Festival d'Avignon'', or Avignon Festival, is an annual arts festival held in the French city of Avignon every summer in July in the courtyard of the Palais des Papes as well as in other locations of the city. Founded in 1947 by Jean Vila ...
in
Avignon
Avignon (, ; ; oc, Avinhon, label=Provençal dialect, Provençal or , ; la, Avenio) is the Prefectures in France, prefecture of the Vaucluse Departments of France, department in the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur Regions of France, region of So ...
, France, and
Tongyeong International Music Festival in
Tongyeong
Tongyeong () is a coastal city in South Gyeongsang Province, South Korea. In 2010, it had an area of and a population of 139,869 people. It is divided into 1 eup (town), 6 myeon (township) and 11 dong (neighborhood). Chungmu city and Tongyeong cou ...
, Korea and Sanskruti Arts Festival, Upvan, India. One-off arts festivals have included the Liverpool08
European Capital of Culture in 2008.
In the summer of 1793, revolutionary France was invaded by foreign armies which resulted in the destruction of all signs of royalty. During this time, French citizens sang, danced, and theaters as well as indoor music multiplied. By 1793, two dozen new venues for music and drama had been established, as a result of the end of restrictive monopolies that previously ruled. Art dealings were rapidly increasing and as a flood of paintings were for sale, this reduced artists to near impoverishment. Therefore, as a result, this called for an attempt to replace the old system of the arts with a new one. This gave rise to festivals that were used not only as an artistic outlet, but also for political protest against the old government system. These festivals often included religious symbolism, political messages and embodied the spirit of liberty, equality and fraternity. In 1792, The "Festival of Liberty" included a Declaration of the rights of man, busts of Voltaire, Rousseau, and Franklin, a hymn to liberty, women in white carrying chains, and a large chariot with a seated statue of liberty
Types of arts festivals
Arts festival
An Arts Festival is an umbrella term for a festival that focuses on multiple art genres including fine art (painting, drawing, pottery), music, photography, film, and other visual styles.
Fringe festival
Fringe theatre is theatre that is produced outside of the main theatre institutions, and that is often small-scale and non-traditional in style or subject matter. The term comes from the Edinburgh Festival Fringe.Kemp, Robert, ''More that is Fre ...
s are a type of arts festival, often focusing on many arts but sometimes focusing on a specific art such as theater more than others.
Some subgenres of an arts festival include art fairs, theater festivals, dance festivals, film festivals, music festivals (pop festivals) and more.
Art fair
An art fair is a subgenre of arts festival that focuses on
visual art
The visual arts are art forms such as painting, drawing, printmaking, sculpture, ceramics, photography, video, filmmaking, design, crafts and architecture. Many artistic disciplines such as performing arts, conceptual art, and textile arts ...
specifically, or specific fields of visual art such as
new media art festivals
The following is a list of festivals dedicated to new media art.
International and online festivals
* ISEA International, The ISEA International Symposium on Electronic Art is an annual event consisting of a symposium on issues related to electr ...
. Other subgenres of art festivals are termed
photography festivals
Photography is the art, application, and practice of creating durable images by recording light, either electronically by means of an image sensor, or chemically by means of a light-sensitive material such as photographic film. It is employed ...
or
street art festivals, for example. Typically, an art fair has a wide range of artists, art dealers, collectors, and curators who buy or sell artwork in a venue, or gallery, that is open to the public. Some items for sale include photography, paintings, drawings, metalwork, handcrafted items and pottery.
Festivals of visual arts are also not to be confused with commercial art fairs. Artists participate in the most important of such festival exhibitions by invitation, and these exhibitions (e.g. the
Venice Biennale
The Venice Biennale (; it, La Biennale di Venezia) is an international cultural exhibition hosted annually in Venice, Italy by the Biennale Foundation. The biennale has been organised every year since 1895, which makes it the oldest of ...
) are organised by internationally recognized curators chosen by a committee of peers. Conversely art fairs are market-oriented shows where art dealers exhibit and sell the work of the artists they represent.
Theater festival
The first drama festival was in 543BC, at the Athenian Great Dionysia. At the drama festivals, playwrights and poets competed to have their plays performed, and the actors competed to win the title for best performance. The performances were given in semi-circular auditorium cut into hillsides and capable of seating 10,000–20,000 people. The stage consisted of a dancing floor, an orchestra, dressing room and scene-building area, known as a skene. The actors were typically men who wore masks appropriate to the characters they represented, and each might play several parts.
Film festival
Film festival
A film festival is an organized, extended presentation of films in one or more cinemas or screening venues, usually in a single city or region. Increasingly, film festivals show some films outdoors. Films may be of recent date and, depending upon ...
s are organized events, usually staged by universities, private organizations, local governments, or arts associations, that show films in cinemas or screening venues and provide filmmakers a chance to get notable recognition among fellow film enthusiasts. Films can include international and domestic releases and can even be on a specific film-maker, genre or subject matter. Film festivals are typically annual events and can feature full-length or short films.
One of the most notable Film Festivals is the
Sundance Film Festival
The Sundance Film Festival (formerly Utah/US Film Festival, then US Film and Video Festival) is an annual film festival organized by the Sundance Institute. It is the largest independent film festival in the United States, with more than 46,66 ...
, which originated from
Salt Lake City
Salt Lake City (often shortened to Salt Lake and abbreviated as SLC) is the Capital (political), capital and List of cities and towns in Utah, most populous city of Utah, United States. It is the county seat, seat of Salt Lake County, Utah, Sal ...
in 1984 as part of the Sundance Institute organization and was founded by Robert Redford. To this date, it is one of the largest independent cinema festivals in the United States.
Poetry festival
Poetry festivals are organized events staged by poetry and literature groups, local arts associations, private organizations and others that showcase contemporary poetry and provide a chance for poets to meet each other, celebrate poetry, critique each other's work and debate poetic issues. Poets can include international, national and local writers, and can include a specific theme. They are often held in a particular location over set dates. In contrast to literary festivals, poetry festivals put poetry centre stage. Poetry Festivals are typically annual events. Festivals established for more than 10 years in the UK include the festivals at Aldeburgh, Ledbury and Torbay, and the Stanza Poetry festival in Scotland.
In India, a number of popular poetry festivals and in Northeast India, Guwahati Grand Poetry festival and Assam Arts Biennale, which began in 2018, are the first of its kind in the region.
See also
*
European Festivals Association
The European Festivals Association (EFA) is an umbrella group for various festivals in Europe and other countries. It supports artistic cooperation among festivals and offers programs for new festival and artistic managers. It represents more than ...
References
External links
British Arts Festivals Association website
{{DEFAULTSORT:Arts Festival
Visual arts exhibitions