Details of next Atelier for Young Festival Managers announced

Details of the next Atelier for Young Festival Managers training programme have been announced, with 36 young festival managers gathering in Gwangju, South Korea, for a conference running from 31 August to 6 September.

Atelier is organised by The Festival Academy, an initiative of the European Festivals Association (EFA). The Gwangju Atelier will help participants develop their networking, programming and managerial skills, under the tutorship of seven internationally-acclaimed festival directors.

The experts leading the debates, tutorials and lectures are Robyn Archer, artistic director of The Light in Winter Festival; Marie-Hélène Falcon, former director of Festival TransAmériques; Nele Hertling, former vice president of Academy of Arts Berlin; Seonghee Kim, artistic director of Asia Culture Center Theater; Chiaki Soma, former artistic director of Tokyo Festival; and Monique Veaute, president of Fondazione Romaeuropa – Arte e Cultura.

Chonnam National University (CNU) and the brand-new Asia Culture Center (ACC) will host the event, with a three-week theatre festival at ACC coinciding with the Atelier.

‘The Atelier GWANGJU 2015 will be all the more meaningful because it will be held in conjunction with the opening festival of the Asian Culture Complex,’ said Ju No Lee, dean of the Graduate School of Culture at CNU. ‘It is our pleasure to host such a global initiative as the Atelier, which will bring the diverse experiences and creative visions of early career professionals to Gwangju.’

Speaking on the choice of Gwangju, Kathrin Deventer, secretary general of EFA, said: ‘Gwangju bears an important historical and cultural significance in the region, and is one of the most vibrant and colourful places in the country.’ Deventer added that a successful Atelier in Singapore back in 2011 had inspired them to revisit the region.

Previous Ateliers have taken place in Goerlitz, Germany (2006), Izmir, Turkey (2011), Edinburgh, UK (2014), Poznan, Poland (2014), and Beirut, Lebanon (2015).