Arts Festivals Summit 2019 - Lisbon

The annual Get-Together of festival makers

IMPROMPTU* III

*An impromptu is a piece of music containing improvisational elements, often in free-form but sometimes also in ternary form (ABA, AAB or ABC form). It is mostly written for piano and based on a musical idea, which is worked out in the composition. This musical form dates from the Romantic era, when composers went looking for new and more personal forms of expression.

Isn’t it true: our job is to be concerned with the future: we are projecting projects, inventing collaborations, foreseeing budgets for our festivals in one, two, three years. That is our job.

The annual gathering of festival makers is NOW! We create together a space of countless encounters. Let us permit ourselves, without purpose or any further finality, to enjoy three days of an ongoing conversation in a shared time. We don’t discuss the better world. We are the world now. Eye to eye. One on One. Be ready for the Lisbon Impromptu.

Impromptu III follows Impromptu I Wiesbaden 2017 and Impromptu II Ljubljana 2018.

Senses, Places and Destinations

We invite you to embark on a conversation about

Senses, Places and Destinations or Arts Festivals, Cities, Communities & Cultural Tourism 

and shed light on this discussion under the main questions:

  • How can the power of the arts be applied as an “instrument” to influence the life in our cities and territories today?   
  • What role for artists, festivals, urban developers and tourism colleagues in a joint vision for our cities of today, and what dialogue formats?

We approach these questions from various perspectives with various examples from festival makers, artists embedding their work strongly on the community/place development, mayors, marketing people in the city, European platforms of cooperation such as Eurocities, ASfE or EFA and tourism agencies.

 250 festival makers from all over the world are together and invited to share their wisdom(s) with each other. The work formats and the inspirational setting by the Estoril Lisbon Festival and Piñeiro Nagy, our host, will inform these encounters: from one – on – one to plenary conversations. Throw your wisdom into the game of three days of dialogue, open your eyes and ears and be surprised: you will leave with something you had not expected, for sure.

Hosted by the Estoril Lisbon Festival

Thanks to the support of our partners

The Arts Festivals Summit is part of the EFA RISE 2 project implemented with the support of the Creative Europe Programme of the European Union.

The MeetUp is part of the preparatory action ‘EFFE – Europe for Festivals, Festivals for Europe’ co-financed by the European Union.