Next Wave Festival

There is also the BAM Next Wave Festival in New York City run by the Brooklyn Academy of Music' and anual festival ...příští vlna / next wave... in Prague, Czech republic.

Next Wave is a biennial festival based in Melbourne, Australia, which promotes and showcases the work of young and emerging artists. Encouraging interdisciplinary practice, Next Wave fosters the creation and presentation of works by artists aged 16 to 30 working across a broad range of art forms, including dance, theatre, visual arts, performance, new media, and literature.

Next Wave is also an artist development organisation and in non-festival years, it runs a development program called Kickstart, with the potential of their works being performed in the following year's festival program.

In August 2007, Next Wave also presented Free Play: The Next Wave Independent Game Developers' Conference, at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image.

History

Next Wave was established in 1984, under the direction of Founding Director Andrew Bleby. The first Next Wave Festival took place in 1985, and established its focus on developing and presenting work by young Australian artists. From 1998 onwards, the festival has occurred biennially. The next festival will be held in May 2012, and has been curated around the concept ‘The space between us wants to sing’.

Next Wave is supported principally through Arts Victoria, the City of Melbourne, and the Australia Council for the Arts. In 2006, the then Minister for the Arts, Mary Delahunty announced a funding increase to Victorian festivals (following a strategic funding review), with Next Wave receiving $350,000 in annual funding.

The current Artistic Director for the 2012 Festival is Emily Sexton, and the Executive Director is Paul Gurney.

2012 Next Wave Festival – The space between us wants to sing

The next Next Wave Festival will unfold from the 19th to the 27th of May 2012. It’s theme is 'The space between us wants to sing' and will be Emily Sexton’s first festival as Artistic Director.

Kickstart

Kickstart is Next Wave’s major developmental activity, assisting young artists across artforms to develop new work in a supportive environment. Taking place in the non-festival year, Kickstart projects are developed with a view towards inclusion in the forthcoming Next Wave Festival and artist's respond to that Festival’s theme. Kickstart participants undertake a program of workshops covering all aspects of project development including creative development, budgeting and marketing as well as receiving ongoing administrative support and professional advice from the Next Wave staff during the Kickstart period. Kickstart programs culminate in developmental showings of the work-in-progress to peers, stakeholders and other Kickstart participants.

2010 Next Wave Festival – No risk too great

Can art be challenging and meaningful in a risk-averse, overly cautious society obsessed with security, OH&S policies and micro-management of behaviour?

The 2010 Next Wave Festival’s theme, 'No Risk Too Great', was a challenge to the artists to be ambitious and see what art can achieve while asking the question: is our society and our art too safe? Next Wave opened up new spaces for artists to explore this question. Building on the momentum of previous Festivals, the 2010 Festival brought together around 53 projects and over 300 artists from Victoria, Australia and across Asia. Popular highlights were Bennett Miller's Daschund U.N., the Sports Club Project at the MCG and the Festival Club. It was also Jeff Khan’s final festival in the role of Artistic Director.

2008 Next Wave Festival – Closer Together

Themed 'Closer Together', the 2008 Next Wave Festival involved almost 400 artists working across 61 projects in 40 or so Melbourne venues. Around 155,000 people came to an exhbition, saw a theatre or dance show, rocked up to one of five or more Festival parties or caught one of the Festival massive Keynote Projects. It all began on the 15th of May when 1300 people came along to the Festival’s opening night at Federation Square in the heart of the city. From there it was 16 days of some of the best work by Australia’s leading emerging artists. Significantly Next Wave organised a series of Keynote Projects that involved the Canadian duo The Movement Movement jogging more than 150 people through the Melbourne Museum; a vast series of workshops and forums in Polyphonic; a collection of artists and artist-run-initiatives from around Australia presenting new work in and around Federation Square in a project called Membrane, and a two art/nightclub events, called The Nightclub Project, staged at two unique venues in the heart of Melbourne’s CBD.

2006 Next Wave Festival – Empire Games

The 2006 Next Wave Festival was themed 'Empire Games' to coincide with the 2006 Melbourne Commonwealth Games, which took place from 15 to 26 March, 2006. Running alongside all the sporting events was a free cultural festival called Festival Melbourne 2006, and Next Wave was responsible for delivering the Youth Program for this festival.

The program for the 'Empire Games' Festival engaged with Melbourne's characteristic architecture and urban space. Some of the key projects included 100 Points of Light, which transformed the city's laneways and shop fronts with installations and projections, and the Containers Village at Melbourne's Docklands, which presented the work of forty-three Commonwealth artist-groups in shipping containers.

Empire Games also presented innovative regional projects, including the digital art project Bitscape. Artist Pip Shea worked with youth from Morwell, Moe, Wagga Wagga and the Macedon Ranges to create audio-visual works which were displayed as large-scale projections on a 90 metre high cooling tower.

See also

• List of festivals in Australia
• 2006 Commonwealth Games
• Australian Centre for the Moving Image
• Marcus Westbury

External links

• Next Wave Festival
• Arts Victoria
• Australia Council for the Arts (OzCo)
• Free Play 2007
• ...příští vlna/next wave... CZ