Art, Meet the Future – York Mediale to return in 2020 — York Mediale

Festival

Art, Meet the Future – York Mediale to return in 2020

Team Mediale is absolutely delighted to announce that we will be back in 2020.

After an intensive 10-day programme, which included extraordinary installations, world premiere performances, cutting edge technology and an outstanding four day symposia series, the UK’s newest, and biggest, media arts festival has been hailed a great success.

Commenting on the success of York Mediale 2018, Creative Director, Tom Higham, said: “It has been a really inspiring and exhilarating ten days. We set ourselves an extremely ambitious target, with more than thirty innovative, technically demanding projects to commission, curate and produce across the festival. We are incredibly proud of what the York Mediale team managed to achieve. We promised something new, something challenging and something extraordinary, and that is exactly what we have delivered. We have learnt some really useful lessons from our experiences and feedback from our visitors, but overall it has been a great success.

“As well as presenting world class media art, we have made so many valuable connections and built some incredible partnerships, not only across York, but across the world. We have demonstrated the benefits to business of working hand in hand with artists and brought new creative energy and ideas to the city. We have hosted gigs that blew people’s minds in partnership with local promoters and hosted DJs and musicians who have never played in the city before.

“The reactions from visitors to York Mediale have been wide ranging, from those who have shared their own experiences of the housing crisis when visiting the Token Homes sculpture by Matthew Plummer-Fernandez, to those who brought flowers in response to Deep Lab UK’s reading of “The List” of 34,361 refugee deaths; people have obviously connected with the work, which has been really heartening.”

UNESCO visit to Stories of Solitude © York Mediale
UNESCO visit to Stories of Solitude Symposium © York Mediale

The impact of the first York Mediale has been felt across the world, with representatives of the global UNESCO Creative Cities Network congregating in York. Many of the works commissioned for York Mediale will now go on tour, reaching new audiences in the UK and further afield. Visitors to York can also continue to experience the stellar exhibition, Strata – Rock – Dust – Stars, at York Art Gallery until 25 November 2018.

“We are extremely grateful to all of the artists, funders and partners who have supported us on our incredible journey to realise the festival this year. We are delighted that we will be able to realise our ambition to become a biennial festival, and to be in a position to plan for our return in 2020.”

Rachael Drew

Festival and Company Manager, York Mediale