Let’s stop reinventing the wheel
Knowledge banks, bodies of evidence, sharing learnings and being honest about failures
Welcome to the 19th edition of my monthly newsletter, all about arts festivals. As ever, a very warm hello to my new and existing subscribers.
Last week I attended the final conference of Spirit of 2012 in London with colleagues from the events and festivals sector, policymakers, funders and volunteers as the organisation closes soon having completed its term and allocated all its grant funding. It was an opportunity for the Spirit of 2012 team and partners to reflect on ‘twelve years of investing in happiness’. And it was also a chance to take stock of the learnings from the many events and festivals Spirit of 2012 has funded as a legacy initiative from London’s hosting of the 2012 Olympics. There was also a strong focus on looking forward to how its Knowledge Bank and our collective learnings can be used as a body of evidence to support and inform the wider sector for the future.
I know from experience that our sector, like many others, can inadvertently repeat previous mistakes and reinvent the wheel when it comes to setting up, delivering and evaluating events and festivals, especially arts festivals where there is no set blueprint.
I remember years ago offering to share my learnings (for free!) with another UK city which will remain nameless, having worked on a cultural programme aligned to a major sporting event and being patronisingly dismissed. Why wouldn’t you want to learn from others who have been through the experience?! And yet, while speaking at a conference in Australia, I was asked to attend a subsequent meeting with city leaders to advise them on their upcoming staging of a major sporting event and cultural programme. Are we more willing to listen to international voices than homegrown?
The UK, like many other countries, has built an extraordinary track record of delivering events and festivals across sport, arts, culture, music and business, especially at scale. However, there is a lack of consistency in how we assess the economic and social value of such events. We can all fall into the trap of focusing too much on monitoring requirements for funders and justifying public investment through purely economic indicators. We should be thinking of evaluation as a learning tool to inform future decision-making and understand the power of events and festivals to deliver value in social connection, inclusion and wellbeing. And of course, use that learning to tell compelling evidence-based stories about positive impacts on individuals and places, as well as fessing up about what went wrong and why.
But how can we learn from our mistakes if we can’t even admit to them? I must give a shout out to my friend and former colleague Dr. Leila Jancovich (University of Leeds) and FailSpace, the AHRC-funded research project she led on with David Stevenson (Queen Margaret University, Edinburgh), both Associate Directors for the Centre for Cultural Value. Whilst not festival and event-specific, it was set up to explore how the cultural sector could better recognise, acknowledge and learn from failure. Although the project officially ended over two years ago, the FailSpace Team is holding a free online peer learning event in January and all the toolkits are still available to use for free.
This is why freely accessible Knowledge Banks are so important. So, it was great to hear that Loughborough University, one of Spirit of 2012’s learning partners, will take on the Knowledge Bank and convening power to continue exploring social value learnings through sport and arts events.
You may recall one of my posts from last year (link below) citing the report, Creating the golden thread: An ambition for major events in the UK, written by Warwick Business School and Spirit of 2012.
Following their summer Major Events Summit that I attended, they have followed up with a new report, Connecting the Golden Thread: Unlocking the UK’s ambition for major events, launched at last week’s conference. The report makes five core recommendations:
1. Develop a UK-wide ambition for major events that unites sport, culture and business within a shared framework.
2. Establish a common national outcomes and evaluation framework to be applied consistently across publicly funded events.
3. Align funding models with the full event lifecycle and embed legacy planning from the outset.
4. Strengthen collaboration, governance and delivery frameworks, supported by practical playbooks and shared platforms.
5. Embed local and community engagement in governance so events reflect and benefit their host places.
It’s probably no surprise to learn that one of the most powerful sessions at the conference was hearing directly from three volunteers whose lives have been positively changed by volunteering at Spirit of 2012 supported events: London 2012 Youth Panel, Coventry UK City of Culture 2021/Birmingham Commonwealth Games 2022, and Bradford City of Culture 2025.
And finally, friend, colleague and conference panellist, Dr Beatriz Garcia and I particularly enjoyed filling out this conference bingo card. HOUSE!
UK News
Announcements
Lisa Nandy, Secretary of State, Department of Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) has announced a new UK Town of Culture competition to tell working class stories. She also confirmed that the DCMS will run a UK City of Culture competition for 2029 to be announced ‘shortly’.
Following an open call process, LIFT (London International Festival of Theatre) has announced that Battersea Arts Centre (BAC) will take on the leadership of the festival.
The British Arts Festivals Association (BAFA) and the Association of Independent Festivals (AIF) have joined forces to ‘grow and support’ UK arts festivals through publishing joint reports on the festivals sector, delivering shared training, and advocating for the sector with policymakers.
Liverpool’s River of Light festival joins Light up the North network and you’ve still got time to catch the ten artworks until this Sunday (2nd Nov). Last year’s event welcomed 186,000 visitors generating £18.9m for the local economy.
Isle of Wight Festival’s license has been renewed until 2033 securing the future of the festival that’s worth over £15m to the island each year.
Surveys
Chai Wallahs, Diplomats of Sound and Grassroots Rising want your input to help shape the new Where it all Began grassroots festival due to take place in Cambridge next summer.
Another survey request, this time from the Purple Guide and the Events Industry Forum, delivered by The Power of Events to measure the economic and social impact of the UK Outdoor Events and Festivals Industry.
Festival profiles
Variety discusses the BFI London Film Festival’s importance as the international launch pad for awards season.
The Croydonites Festival is plugging the gap in theatre provision locally with ‘bold theatre, not cheap punchlines’, according to Natasha Tripney in The Stage.
Marketing Manchester reflects on last month’s Manchester La Mercé collaboration in Barcelona (LinkedIn article), and one of the participating artists, Darren Pritchard, shares his experiences.
Susannah Stevenson, Festival Director and Chief Executive of Canterbury Festival talks to Culture Calling about her first year at the festival.
Kate Anderson, Head of Cultural Programmes and Partnerships at the Royal Dock Team reflects on the role of the inaugural biennial festival, Royal Docks Originals in placemaking with an ambition to become London’s international centre for water-based arts and events.
UK art and design platform, Creative Boom run a monthly creative challenge and they asked designers to create an identity for a fictional Echo Festival: a three-day celebration of sound, creativity and community by the sea. Have a look at the results. And a real festival, Hartlepool’s Northern Festival of Illustration, on till tomorrow (Sat 1st Nov), gets a shout out in Creative Boom.
More than 50 museums and galleries are taking part in the Welsh Museums Festival with ‘hwyl’ as its theme, that’s Welsh for fun, joy or enthusiasm, ending this weekend (Sun 2 Nov).
Opportunities and personnel changes
Edinburgh International Festival’s Access Panel is looking for a new cohort of D/deaf, disabled and neurodivergent members.
After 36 years, founder and director of Scottish Storytelling Festival, Donald Smith will retire at the end of this year.
EdFringe Society Deputy Chief Executive, Lyndsey Jackson is moving to Edinburgh Lyceum to take up the role of Executive Director in January.
Garsington Opera festival welcomes former executive producer of BBC TV Proms, Ben Weston as its new classical music programmer.
Call outs and artist commissions
Applications close today (Fri 31st Oct) for Greater Manchester Combined Authority’s SXSW showcase opportunities.
Conferences, seminars and debates
Join Light up the North in person or online for their talks series next month exploring the world of light art and light festivals.
Tickets are now available for the British Arts Festivals Association (BAFA) Annual Conference in January with the theme of ‘Resilient Festivals’, and they’re offering a reduced introductory price for annual membership to festivals with a turnover below £20k, contact rachel@artsfestivals.co.uk for more information.
If you missed the Centre for Events and Festivals’ latest debate – ‘Have private events taken over too much public space’, it’s now available to view online.
Report launches and new articles/books/podcasts
Manchester City of Literature has released their evaluation report of this year’s Festival of Libraries.
British comedian Stewart Lee shares his thoughts on Western comedians playing the Riyadh Comedy Festival in The Nerve, the new independent media title covering culture, politics and tech. Omid Djilali explains his reasons for participating in The Guardian.
The 5th edition of the World Culture Cities Forum report has just been released representing over 40 global cities, and the number of cultural festivals is one of the cultural data indicators.
New book series from Routledge on how events transform society, edited by Mike Duignan, Professeur, University of Paris 1 (Pantheon-Sorbonne) and the Centre for Events and Festivals.
New research maps the development of urban music festivals and their role in ‘moving musical culture into everyday urban life and third places’.
New and returning festivals
RBO/Shift is a new four-day festival connecting the worlds of opera and technology at the Royal Opera House next June.
If you’re quick, you can catch the last concerts in the Hallé Orchestra’s John Adams Festival at Bridgewater Hall this weekend (Fri 31st-Sat 1 Nov).
Alan Cumming, Pitlochry Festival Theatre’s Artistic Director has announced a new LGBTQIA+ festival, Out in the Hills. Highlights include Cumming in Noël Coward’s Me and the Girls, and he’s in conversation with Graham Norton, Ian McKellan performing a rehearsed reading of a new play, and a ‘big gay ceilidh’.
Cancelled or postponed festivals
Manchester Pride has gone into liquidation but Manchester City Council vows to “play a full and active role in bringing together the LGBTQ community to help shape how the city moves forward to ensure a bright and thriving future for Manchester Pride.”
Sad news that this year’s Durham Lumiere will be the last. Since it began in 2009, the biennial festival has attracted over 1.3million visitors and generated more than £43m for the local economy.
MAYK, the organisation that runs Mayfest in Bristol has closed, after already halting plans for Mayfest 2026, due to diminishing income and rising costs.
Edinburgh festivals
Festivals Edinburgh warns of impending threats to the feasibility of the festivals due to increasing costs in a report submitted to the UK parliament’s inquiry into the large-scale events industry.
Pleasance Theatre Trust and its subsidiary Pleasance Theatre Festival, one of the biggest programmers at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, has reported a deficit of £61,311.
Comedian, writer and broadcaster Graham Norton is the newest ambassador of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe.
My friend Professor Jane Ali-Knight, Edinburgh Napier University recently gave a keynote lecture at the 18th World Leisure Congress entitled, ‘Fringe Benefits: how the Edinburgh Festivals make the city a better place to live, work and play in’. You can read an excerpt here.
Awards and nominations
Liverpool Biennial is nominated for two awards at the Liverpool City Region Tourism Awards in two categories including Event/Festival of the Year which is decided by a public vote.
International News
Announcements
Nikšić, Montenegro has been recommended by the European Capital of Culture (ECoC) selection panel as the non-EU ECoC for 2030.
The board of Belgrade International Theatre Festival have blocked director Milo Rau’s planned programming for this year’s festival, resulting in Rau’s resignation. Natasha Tripney writing in The Stage states, ‘t(T)here has been a worrying erosion of freedom of speech and artistic expression across Serbia’.
This year’s Hudson Valley Dance Festival in New York has raised a record-breaking sum for Dancers Responding to AIDS, a Broadway Cares programme.
Also in New York, Radar Festival of experimental theatre has announced its programme for January, including Manchester’s very own Quarantine with their show 12 Last Songs.
Opportunities and personnel changes
Stratford Festival in Ontario, Canada has announced that Jonathan Church will be its new Artistic Director.
Call outs and artist commissions
Applications are now open for Sydney Festival 2026 Arts Industry Programme - Arts Pass.
Festival profiles
New York’s Breaking the Binary Festival is featured on the latest episode of Playbill’s podcast.
Biennials, triennials, quadrennials, quinquennials
Next year Montreal will once again host the Biennale CINARS, the hub for artists, presenters and curators to discover and showcase the latest innovations in dance, theatre, circus, music, puppetry and interdisciplinary performance.
The largest contemporary art biennial in South Asia, Kochi-Muziris Biennial in India has announced 66 artists for this year’s edition. The festival kicks off in December with the theme ‘oriented around the body, a bearer of memory and materiality, a site of encounter, and a witness to temporality’.
Delhi-based art dealer Roshini Vadehra flags the role of biennials in the thriving Indian art market.
Qatar announces a new Quadriennial – Rubaiya Qatar - launching in 2026 with the title ‘Unruly Water’.
Venice Biennale
Chiara Camoni will represent Italy at next year’s Venice Biennale.
After so much controversy Creative Australia has awarded artist Khaled Sabsabi a $100,000 grant towards a new exhibition in Adelaide in 2027. The exhibition will feature work that will debut in the Australia Pavilion at the Venice Biennale next year.
The United Arab Emirates has announced that Bana Kattan will curate its National Pavilion at the upcoming Venice Biennale.
New festivals
There’s a new lantern festival, Illuminate which will debut at Aquatica Orlando, Florida in November, running through to January.
Cancellations and postponements
Stockholm’s Jewish International Film Festival has been forced to postpone this year’s festival due to some cinemas refusing to screen films, citing concerns over safety and security.
European Festivals Association (EFA)
EFA has just released a report titled, ‘Festivals in Context: The role of the arts in local cultural policy’ by Elena Polivtseva exploring how territories look at festivals and their role locally.
EFA has launched its EFEE Seal - a charter for Festival Cities and Regions that ‘wish to associate and integrate their development and image with a strong festival, cultural - and European – commitment’.
EFA’s Berlin Conference takes place next month with the title ‘New paths to democracy’, offering ‘a much-needed space for dialogue between the arts, civil society, and politics – bridging personal commitment with collective responsibility’.
EFA has launched the new EFFE Label 2026-7 as a quality stamp for ‘remarkable arts festivals showing their engagement in the field of arts, community involvement and international openness’.
Awards
Katja Heitmann was awarded the International Light Festivals Organisation’s (ILO) Artist Award 2025 for her installation PERPETUUM at the ILO AGM last week.
And finally, as Diwali, the Hindu festival of lights, has just taken place, the town of Ayodhya, Uttar Pradesh in northern India has set a new world record beating last year’s Guinness World Record for the number of lamps lit – 2.6 million!
Watch Spirit of 2012’s Crafting Events That Matter round-up film below:
UK upcoming highlights
Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival
West Yorkshire’s festival returns for its 48th year with over 50 premieres including Composer in Residence Sarah Hennies’ The Blue Hour; Estonian composer/double bassist Mingo Rajandi’s musical examination of ‘femininity’; and hcmf// shorts – 14 free-to-attend, bite-sized performances – from midday to midnight on Monday 24 November.
Scotland’s Highland celebration of all things winter including lights, music, workshops, tours and an opening parade.
As Bradford 2025 moves towards its last couple of months, there’s still plenty to see. 29% Festival from my former client Common/Wealth celebrates the city’s young people and young artists through live performance, music, dance, art and workshops, all created and performed by the young people of Bradford.
And the city centre will be transformed by light installations exploring the ‘Colour of Light’ in the free festival, BD:is LiT.
For international experimental music and art in Sunderland, this year’s festival is being funded by the organiser’s own savings and door ticket sales after successive failed funding bids. Highlights include Dawn Terry playing slow, melancholic, optimistic music for sad people; Sly and the Family Drone’s free form chaos rock; Felicia Atkinson’s compositions on the piano, using voice and field recordings to manipulate her environment; and Tim Shaw’s Soundwalk.
Hundreds of free events take place across the UK demonstrating the way humanities inspire and enrich our everyday lives, help us to understand ourselves, our relationships with others, and the challenges we face in a changing world.
The festival is led by the School of Advanced Study at the University of London with Festival Hubs at universities across the UK. As someone with a Masters in Humanities and a PhD in Film Studies, it’s deeply troubling to see how Humanities courses are constantly under threat at so many of our universities.
‘Indulge in a weekend of danger, desire and despair’ in Weston-Super-Mare. Opening with a special Stanley Kubrick Film Noir Double Bill marking the 70th anniversary of his Killer’s Kiss (1955), followed by The Killing (1956). The first multi-year strand kicks off by showcasing the talents of London born star Ida Lupino (a favourite of mine). The festival will close with the 75th anniversary screening of Gun Crazy (1950) in the centenary year of its star, Peggy Cummins.
The UK’s largest music literature festival returns to Manchester with conversations, workshops, writing surgeries and live performances. In a programme dominated by men, look out for events with Clare Grogan, actor, writer and former lead singer of Altered Images, and Debsey Wykes - one of the UK’s first female post-punk musicians.
This year’s theme ‘In the Blink of an Eye’ explores the impermanence of things. My friends at Things That Go On Things bring Things That Light Up – an ever-changing colourful pathway in Williamson Park. Molecular Clouds by Daksha Patel is an interactive projection that reveals greenhouse gases as ephemeral and colourful molecular forms projected onto Lancaster Castle Wall.
Multidisciplinary, multilingual and multicultural performance celebrating the best of British and emerging artists taking place in London. A few shows that caught my eye include Woo Wolf by Ensemble Not Found, billed as a ‘multilingual fever dream and playful protest’; 5:36 Port Said by Mnemorabilia Theatre Group, inspired by a family archive; and Women Over 30 Don’t Matter by Cherry & Guava Theatre Co., described as a witty satire about AI and the patriarchy.
Another festival of new and emerging theatrical performances from across the world, this time in Malvern, Worcestershire. Inter-act brings Whisper All Your News about a group who set up a bee-keeping society to combat loneliness; and there’s Sceptre by Coreena Fenton and Dan Johnson – start with a guided stroll then enter the Theatre of Small Convenience for an immersive séance with Madam Sceptre.
International upcoming highlights
The theme for this year’s festival is ‘Whispers on the Horizon’, bringing together 54 artists from 35 cities with 33 newly commissioned works and site-specific installations. ‘Taiwan’s layered history—marked by colonial rule, shifting identities, and political transformation—forms the backdrop of the Taipei Biennial 2025’.
New visual art performance taking place across New York. This edition features eight commissions including The Colour Scheme by artist and writer Aria Dean that imagines a dialogue between two Black American expatriates shortly after World War One in Berlin; and Body^n by Ayoung Kim exploring ‘the invisible labour of bodies as they are captured, replicated, and made unfamiliar through technologies such as motion capture and virtual reality’.
Over three consecutive weekends at Italy’s Teatro Donizetti, festival goers can see four titles in three new productions including Caterina Cornaro and a double bill of two one-act operas, Il campanello and Deux hommes et une femme.
This year’s highlights include The Dublin Review at 100 celebrating the centenary of Ireland’s quarterly magazine; Women, Struggle and Resilience, a discussion about the treatment of women in Ireland across three centuries; and Shadows of Our Past exploring family, grief, memory, migration and belonging.
Hip Hop International Dance Fest
A curated selection of performances by prestigious dance companies from around the world taking place in San Francisco. Showcasing a wide range of hip hop styles—from breaking and locking to waacking, krump, house, and more.
This year’s theme is ‘The Promise of change’ exploring the power and possibilities of transformation. Two of the featured installations are Dreamcatcher by Spain’s Calidos; and Barriere by Dutch artist Philip Ross using light as a barrier that at first appears impenetrable.
We’re definitely well into light festival season now. Toronto’s annual festival returns with three exhibition zones across the city centre under the theme of ‘Translating the City’. One of the highlights is Eunice Wong and their art collective’s We See You inspired by a dream about a talking bench.
Retrace the footsteps of AlUla’s great civilisations in Saudi Arabia through performances, tours of archaeological wonders and rare glimpses of artefacts that shaped the region. You can explore ancient tombs, attend starlit concerts and follow torchlit trails.
One of Asia’s biggest street theatre festivals showcasing established, new and fringe performances in Shizuoka, Japan.
As I’ve just been to Flanders in Belgium, I thought it fitting to choose a festival from that region. This short film festival in the beautiful city of Leuven presents fiction, animation, documentaries and non-narrative films from around the world.
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See you next month for more festival news, stories, and insights.