A partnership project led by ArtReach (UK), FabriC (BG) and Haus Drei (D)

Building on the five year international development of the multi art form Night of Festivals  event (devised and led by ArtReach), a team of European partners, all working in development of cutting-edge carnival, visual arts and street arts performance, came together to explore a European artistic response to the values of freedom and democracy in a time of seismic change and uncertainty.

FREEDOM was a collaboration involving three formal delivery partners – ArtReach (lead partner, UK), FabriC (Bulgaria) and Haus Drei (Germany). Working through a process of co-curation the partners shared innovative artistic practice to create three multi art form strands of work that celebrated and explored values of freedom.

The three strands of work were – a night time carnival performance; a Freedom Wall installation/Urban Art project – digital and physical; and a series of temporary art installations (The Plinth Programme) – for delivery in the UK (Leicester and London), Bulgaria (Sofia) and Germany (Hamburg), all under the cohesive artistic umbrella of the Night of Festivals project.

In each partner country, as part of the Freedom Wall strand, local artists were recruited to deliver workshops with community groups, schools and groups of individual participants. Participants were encouraged to explore and determine what freedom and democracy means to them and to interpret that through graffiti/Urban Art which was realised on a temporary Freedom Wall.

The outcomes from the project included presentations as part of Night of Festivals in Leicester (2-4 October 2015) and London (August 2016), and in pop-up form as part of Gabrovo Carnival in Bulgaria (May 2016) and STAMP Festival in Hamburg (September 2016). The presentations reached live audiences of 250.000 plus and stimulated engagement from many thousands more through on line activity.