From the third week of October to the first of November, cultural activities take place at ITESO university and the ITESO Clavigero House, with the presence of artists who stand out for their career, talent or innovative proposals. Experience for 15 days a sample of the cultural diversity of the country through proposals of visual and performing arts, music and literature, as well as lectures and talks on heritage, cultural management and science dissemination. Participate in courses and workshops given by the artists who travel to Guadalajara, Mexico, for this festival, and take the opportunity to have a close dialogue and learn with them. They all have significant artistic backgrounds and experience. All activities are open to the public in the city. None has a cost for attendees, except for the Cultural Route and the courses and workshops that have a recovery cost and require prior registration. Festival Cultural Universitario was born in 2002 with the aim of valuing, disseminating and experiencing the cultural diversity of the country and enriching the university community around art, culture and its different forms of connection with science and philosophy. Since its formation it belongs to the National Network of Festivals of the National Council for Culture and the Arts (Conaculta -by its acronym in Spanish). This festival seeks to contribute to the improvement of the social fabric through the revaluation of heritage, reflection and analysis of culture in Mexico.

Website: cultura.iteso.mx/festival

Mittelfest represents the most significant artistic focal point in Central Europe. It brings together the artistic ideas originated in this creatively potent European area together with the culture of Friuli Venezia Giulia. The rich local culture and the diversity of the Italian culture as the whole are also enriched by two dozens ethnic minority cultures here. As the major logistical route and touristic region, this area is also a platform for a meeting and exchange of the cultural forces from Poland and Germany to the south of Italy and Albania and from Romania and Serbia to Switzerland. Clearly, Mittelfest goes often beyond these areas too. Creating common ground for European identity; open-mindedness; international spirit; consideration for local culture; European values; sensitivity for human rights and freedom of expression; dialogue; curiosity; surprise; joy; sense for adventure and creative energy are the basic values of Mittelfest.

Cork Midsummer Festival is an annual multi-disciplinary arts festival that uses the city as its backdrop and inspiration. It provides high-quality arts events, both national and international, for audiences of all ages. Its program provides opportunities for significant public participation and engagement, supports the development of emerging artists across all art forms, and provides a unique platform for work by local and national artists.

Website: https://www.corkmidsummer.com/

The Isnard Azevedo Festival, sponsored by Florianopolis City Hall, through the Municipal Secretariat of Culture, Sport and Youth and the Florianópolis Cultural Foundation of Franklin Cascaes, is a show of theatrical diversity with the participation of 53 theater groups from six Brazilian states and two international theater that includes theatrical performances of children’s theater shows, children’s theater, adult theater, street theater and circus-theater of the most varied genres and formats.

Brave Festival – the festival of the brave, of the people who say where they are from, what their values are, traditions and spirituality. This is not a festival about works of art but about the art which can save and protect thousands of forgotten, abandoned, lonely cultures and people.

Our mission is to bring together children from all over the world in an atmosphere of friendship and respect for each other’s cultures. We do so by joining together children in artistic experiences aimed to inspire them to imagine a better future for themselves and their communities and provide them with tools to help realize their aspirations.

International Theatre Festival KONTAKT has been organized by Wilam Horzyca Theater since 1991. KONTAKT enabled to review and promote the most interesting theatrical events from the countries of Central and Eastern Europe and their confrontation with theatres from Western Europe KONTAKT became a mediator of multinational, sometimes uneasy agreements in the new reality.
As part of the KONTAKT, accompanying events are held – art exhibitions, film projections and concerts. The performances are accompanied by meetings with artists, which are a very important element of the festival. The festival KONTAKT is a competition, the participating performances are assessed by an international jury which awards three top festival prizes. There is also the possibility of funding awards by individuals, institutions and companies.

The Association of ”The Theatre of Black and White” in Imatra has been organizing The International Black and White Theatre Festival since year 2004. Right since that time Black and White Theatre Festival has become well-known event for many people of the world. At the festival we could see the performing of different theatres from 46 countries, so far more than 250 shows and performances. For 16 years, Black and White Theatre Festival has presented a huge variety of different styles: dance theatre, ballet, pantomime, circus, traditional drama, opera, puppet theatre and street performing. The purpose of the festival is – to represent the international theatre in all its manifestation and genres.

Since 1997, the festival “From near nobody is normal” animates the Milan summer evenings. The former psychiatric hospital, as an emblem of exclusion, has become a public square of sociality and culture, a strong sign that even in the suburbs it is possible to have a public life full of quality, accessible events.

With meaningful engagement opportunities from artists talks, workshops, discussions and the festival bar—House Pour, the Festival House breaks down the walls between artists and audiences to create unique experiences and inspiring artistic encounters.

The program of the festival offers a variety of shows and experiences. True to its eclectic, multidisciplinary line and international, the festival will welcome both confirmed artists as emerging. 

The Festival presents the most interesting international avant-garde and independent works including theatre shows, concerts, and exhibitions. It also engages its audiences in workshops and panel discussions.

KONTRAPUNKT (Counterpoint) is one of the oldest theatre festivals in Poland. It integrates the whole artistic environment of Szczecin with theatre artists, writers and poets, fine and photography artists among them. KONTRAPUNKT exposes the latest trends and developments in Polish and German theatre. It confronts the achievements of recognised artists with interesting experiments by the emerging artists. Besides the Jury Awards, the general public gives out Grand Prix, the major prize of the festival.

There are two key aims: First, to develop the idea of a relaxed performance/screening further to create an entire festival that’s designed to be as autism-friendly as possible. Second, to be a celebration of autistic creativity, with a range of performances, films, installations and an exhibition of visual art by artists on the spectrum.

Every other year, Performatik showcases contemporary performance art or ‘live art’, together with a great many Brussels partners. For eleven days, artists enter a twilight zone in which they tinker with the codes of both the performing arts and the visual arts. Performance has flourished in the arts world in the past, but over the past few years has increasingly come to occupy its own distinct space.

InArt – Community Arts Festival aims to examine and explore new strategies of work and interaction of disabled people for citizenship by promoting contact with the various forms of artistic expression. InArt includes various cultural events – seminars, performances, video exhibitions, talks and workshops. It brings together artists, technicians, psychologists, journalists, teachers and students in reflection and sharing of processes and issues through dialogue and artistic display.

The Banco do Brasil Cultural Center hosts the Summer Contemporary Art Festival – VAC, a multidisciplinary festival with theater, dance, visual arts, cinema, literature and music attractions.

CAN Festival is the first arts festival in the UK dedicated to showcasing to the public performing arts that explore contemporary Chinese themes, perspectives and art forms. The festival showcased a diverse range of art forms (music, drama, live art, dance, films, digital arts) with over 60 events across London.

Serendipity Arts Festival is a multidisciplinary Festival that brings together performative, visual, and culinary practices from India and beyond, in ways unseen before. Spread across various venues in Panaji, Goa, the Festival serves as a platform for eminent and emerging artists to showcase their work and collaborate.

Cross-art, cross-impairment festival which takes place every November-December in East London. It brings together locally based, national and international Disabled artists and offers exhibitions, performances, screenings, events and other activities that are free and open to everyone. Includes a disability film festival.

Simbiòtic Festival is a multidisciplinary festival of performing arts that offers contemporary and accessible programming, both for audiences with sensory diversity and for performing arts enthusiasts.

Welcome to the biennial New Vision Arts Festival! Our line-up showcases the Festival’s role as a creative platform, where artistic genres and cultural insights converge and energize innovation, bringing a new viewing experience to the audience.

A multidiscplinary contemporary international performing arts Festival based in the city of Badajoz, region of Extremadura, southern Spain.

Cádiz, the oldest city in Western Europe, located in the south of Spain, is a seafaring city straddling the Mediterranean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean. Since its foundation by the Phoenicians, many civilizations inhabited Cádiz. True to its Americanist tradition, for more than thirty years, Cádiz has been celebrating and organizing the Ibero-American Festival of Cádiz. The FIT of Cádiz started in 1986 as a platform for the dissemination and consolidation of the Ibero-American Performing Arts. The Ibero-American Festival of Theater of Cádiz is a multidisciplinary festival whose main objective is to show the current moment of theater, dance and other scenic expressions of the Ibero-American framework. The FIT of Cádiz is also a cultural meeting: it also provides a space for the interaction of Ibero-American performing arts professionals through the organization of Research Encounters, Thematic Meetings, Project Presentations, Publications and Editions of Performing Arts, Workshops, Forums, among other activities. Throughout these years, the most prestigious groups, authors, directors of scene and personalities of the Ibero-American theatrical medium have gone through it. The Ibero-American Festival of Theater of Cádiz is the ideal forum for the reflection and analysis of the expressive and theoretical tools of the Ibero-American theatrical profession.

This festival takes all its meaning and its interest to be accompanied by a real field work, intended to facilitate access to the culture of disabled people and to promote social diversity in theaters, cinemas and libraries. It showcases high quality contemporary ‘art and disability’ work.

For over 50 years Dimitria Festival continues to represent the most modern trends in all artistic forms and to utilise the heritage of Thessaloniki and Greece. Through new artistic landscapes of sound, image, and experience, operatic elements are combined with puppetry, technology becomes a crucial part of the performing arts, the performative practices of theatre and dance meet performance art, Greek musicians meet international musicians.

Dublin Fringe Festival is a platform for the best new, emerging Irish arts companies and a showcase for the finest international contemporary performing arts. For artists, Fringe facilitates opportunities to innovate, to cross boundaries and strengthen the conditions in which they work. For audiences, Fringe is the place to discover meaningful, exciting and unforgettable cultural experiences.

Website: www.fringefest.com/

Festival Reviews and Reports:

2019

Dublin Fringe Festival 2019: Women In Flux

Cape Town Fringe is a live multi-arts festival and an annual celebration of local and international creativity, the festival encourages experimentation, collaboration and innovation. 

A biannual Festival of theatre, dance, music and performance. During three days, the audience has a choice of five different routes, each one starting at the municipal theatre and then branching out into a range of unusual and exciting spaces in the city of Osnabrück. Each instalment of the Festival has a Motto. This year, the young theatre-makers that form the backbone of the Festival will explore the future of mankind: artificial intelligence, cloning, the future of work etc.

BOUNCE is the annual arts festival produced by the University of Atypical. Since 2012 Bounce has presented new work by deaf and disabled writers, actors, dancers, musicians, directors and poets, as well as hosting participatory workshops and masterclasses across a range of art forms.

Southbank Centre’s Unlimited Festival is one of the world’s largest disability arts festivals, celebrating the artistic excellence of disabled artists across artforms. The festival programmes work produced as part of the Unlimited commissioning programme (delivered by Shape and Artsadmin) alongside other work by leading disabled artists. It features performances, exhibitions and talks. The festival predominantly showcases UK artists and companies, with some international representation.

With multidisciplinary programming that combines theater, dance, visual arts, performance, music, film and literature, actoral, an international festival, gives to see and hear the diversity and vitality of contemporary creation. Each autumn for three weeks, more than two hundred French and international artists join Marseille to perform.

One of the most vital and dynamic cultural events in Warsaw. Jazz, pop, cabaret revues, theatre, literature, visual arts, history and tradition of Jews, Poland, Warsaw. A wide-ranging offer for children and families.

nternational Theatre Festival Retroperspektywy is the only festival in Poland that rejects the division of genres and currents and does not grade the artists as professionals and amateurs, presenting at the same time the most interesting theatre phenomena which define cultural identity of a modern man. In the events offered such identity is determined by the modern language of art that follows its own ways and search for the references to tradition. Here every year there meet prominent musicians, dancers and masters of word.

Kyoto Experiment: Kyoto International Performing Arts Festival is a theater and dance event held every autumn since 2010 at theaters in Kyoto. It features a wide-ranging lineup of radical artists from Japan and around the world, presenting theater and dance as well as visual art, music, design, and architecture.

Helsinki Festival is the largest arts festival in Finland, organised annually in late summer. The festival’s aim is to make art accessible for all. The programme line-up features classical and world music, theatre, dance, circus and visual arts as well as a range of urban events.

The multidisciplinary Galway International Arts Festival takes place each July in Galway, Ireland and covers a range of art forms. In 2018, The Guardian named the festival as one of the Top 5 Summer Festivals in Europe.

The precursor to Finnish city festivals, Jyväskylän Kesä has strived throughout its history to stay ahead of its time and try new things. At the core of our multidisciplinary art programme are classy and interesting performances best experienced on the spot.

Materia Prima presents surprising and revealing performances, in which the theatre combines with a new circus and dance theatre, dance intermingles with multimedia, as well as forms of puppet theatre, masks and shadows, where actors’ acting often contradicts the principles of physics and where the imagination has no limits. The Festival program consists of attractive, phenomenal performances and perfectly performed performances.