12 recommendations for a new youth arts festival

This group of brilliant young people has completed their research into what a youth arts festival for Wales could look like.

The group propose a festival that is by young people for young people. The festival will be fun, innovative and surprising. It will be about performing and exhibiting work, opportunities to get to know each other and learn from each other. The festival will be bilingual and be fully inclusive of people with disabilities. It will be an immersive experience over a series of days when a large group stay together, with additional audiences coming for single days.

We’ve made 12 specific recommendations to the Arts Council of Wales backed up by a lengthy report, giving our reasoning.

  1. A festival which moves to urban environments throughout Wales, anchored at an arts venue with satellite locations in the town/city
  2. The target audience is young people aged 12 – 25 years. Families and supporters will also be targeted to buy day tickets
  3. The inaugural festival to take place in 2016 to allow sufficient time to prepare for an ambitious programme
  4. The inaugural festival to take place in Newport and the following year in Bangor
  5. The 2016 festival to be anchored at The Riverfront plus spaces throughout the city
  6. The first festival will last 3 days: evening Thursday 18th to afternoon Sunday 21st August 2016. The number of days can build in future years
  7. In order to have an in-depth immersive experience, all participants should be accommodated close-by. The preferred option is to use university accommodation
  8. Partnerships will be crucial to the success of the festival, in particular working closely with youth arts leaders across Wales
  9. In order to generate interest for the first festival there should be a lead-up campaign from early 2015 which makes creative use of digital media
  10. Young people will be in the driving seat throughout the organisation of the festival. This will include forming a steering group, curating the festival, working as apprentices, and being trained as volunteers on all aspects of the festival
  11. Sponsorship or funding will be sought to cover the cost of accommodation and food, and / or a bursary scheme. There will be a charge for day tickets. The festival will be free of charge for volunteers and as low a price as possible for participants
  12. The festival will have paid staff to set up and run the event

We are delighted that Arts Council Wales has published the full report and its response here: http://www.artscouncilofwales.org.uk/youth-arts-festival  and that they would like Ceridwen to do further work on the journey towards a youth arts festival.

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