Stuart WoodThe organisers of Festival UK are calling for creative submissions from event organisers and the creative industries.
Festival UK is the working title for the festival celebrating British creativity and innovation, which was announced by former Prime Minister Theresa May as the ‘Festival of Brexit’ in 2018. It will take place in 2022, after the UK has left the European Union.
The festival will have five sectors: science, technology, engineering, arts and mathematics. The organisers have opened applications for teams who wish to be commissioned to create ideas for the event.
30 teams will each receive £100,000 for the R&D phase of the project if chosen. Teams will be between three and eight people and can include organisations and individuals. These 30 teams will then be narrowed down to 10 ideas, which will constitute the festival.
Once these 10 ideas have been selected, they will be awarded commission budgets of between £4 and £10 million.
You can apply at this link. The deadline for submissions is 16 October. There will also be two live Q&As with Festival UK’s chief creative officer Martin Green CBE, who was previously in charge of the Olympic ceremonies and Hull’s year as UK City of Culture. He is also chief creative officer of the Birmingham 2022 Commonwealth Games.
These Q&As will take place on (clickable links):
Tuesday 15 September: 18.00 – 19.00 BST
Wednesday 16 September 10.00 -11.00 BST
Green commented: “We are trying not to pre-determine things but to absolutely let the experts, the creatives, respond to a challenge and see what happens. Ultimately we are about new, exciting, very different ways of engaging with people creatively”.
Addressing some of the initial scepticism surrounding the ‘Festival of Brexit’ name first announced by Theresa May, Green added: “A lot of people, and I know some of them very well, were quite alarmed about the project when it was first launched because of what people said it might be. Now people can see what the project actually is, I hope those fears will dissipate.”