Description
What is Found Festival, anyway?
We take art out of conventional venues directly into the community. Found Festival celebrates art of all kinds: theatre, dance, film, poetry, music, sound art, installation art, endurance art…if it’s art created for unconventional spaces that challenges the artist/audience relationship, there’s a home for it in Found Festival.
Found Festival is for you, exactly as you are. No matter who you are, what you look like, how or who you love, where you’re from, how you got here, how you identify, how or if you honour whatever higher power, how you move through this world – you belong here. What matters to us is that you feel welcome.
We’re planning four days of Found Festival magic July 10-13, 2025.
WHAT WE’RE LOOKING FOR:
Original creations for unconventional spaces by artists at any stage of their career, with formal training or none, and of diverse identities, cultural backgrounds, and abilities.
Projects may be of any discipline: Theatre, poetry, music, dance, visual arts, literary, or all of the above!
There’s no limit to what’s possible at Found 2025. We welcome pitches of all genres/disciplines and stages of development. For inspiration, here are a few things our curation team have in mind for 2025:
- works that have undergone some development/have a history of production
- projects that have an interactive component
- projects with specific desired locations in Old Strathcona (a particular business, park, etc.)
Selected projects will receive an artist fee, production support, mentorship, and Festival infrastructure support (marketing, box office, etc).
Artist call closes December 6, 2024.
Tips for your application:
- Projects that stand out are those that have clearly considered their work’s relationship to place, space, and audience. Try to get your pitch from “this project could totally work in this place” to “this project couldn’t work anywhere but this place!”
- Found space art comes with many unique technical challenges. We’re not expecting you to know exactly how to execute your project – we’re here to help with that! – identifying what you don’t know yet about how to make your project happen is just as helpful for us to understand how far you’ve thought out your concept.
- Community impact is always at the top of our minds. We’re looking for projects that provide a one-of-a-kind experience for their audiences: we love to hear about what you expect your audience to see, hear, feel, touch, do, with your project and what support you need to make it possible.
Selected projects will receive an artist fee, production equipment and labour scaled to project needs, Festival infrastructure (marketing, box office, event management), and access to our staff’s experience and knowledge around site-specific art.
Artists who are eligible will receive hands-on support in submitting applications for local, regional, or national funding programs from the Festival producing team. Edmonton Arts Council and Alberta Foundation for the Arts deadlines are expected to fall in February-March 2025.
HOW TO APPLY
DEADLINE: 11:59pm MST on December 6, 2024.
There are a few ways to pitch your project for Found Festival. We’re not picky, we want you to pitch your project in any of the following ways that feels most comfortable for you!
Choose one of the following:
Application Form: Click here to submit an application form! Want to collaborate on your application or have some time to edit it? Click here for an editable worksheet before you head to the Google Form.
Email Pitch: Send an email to admin(at)commongroundarts.ca outlining:
- A brief project description, including desired audience experience;
- Your background as an artist/collective;
- Desired venue(s)/location(s);
- Potential community impact (how the project involves or effects the local community, any additional outreach activities you might want to engage with);
- Potential technical/creative support you’d like to get it done;
and anything else we should know!
Video Pitch: Create a brief video (3-5 minutes) outlining the above points and send it to admin@commongroundarts.ca. Don’t worry about any production – talk to your webcam for a couple of minutes and let us know what you’re thinking about!
Live Pitch: Prefer face-to-face? We’re into it! Request a face-to-face meeting to pitch your project to the Festival producing team by filling out this brief form no later than November 27, 2024. We’ll accommodate all requests for live pitches, but we encourage you to submit yours ASAP to make the most of the Found Festival team’s availability!
