After a launch at New Now in Germany and a series of workshops and presentations at MUTEK Forum, the Future Festivals initiative now makes its stop in Quebec at the Mois Multi festival.

Sarah Mackenzie, creative director of MUTEK Forum and co-lead of Future Festivals, will explore this initiative during a presentation at the professional component of the Mois Multi festival. She will also unveil the preliminary results of a survey sent to festival organizers and their audiences worldwide, aiming to envision and build a better future for new media and musical gatherings in a post-pandemic reality.

From early 2023 to the end of 2024, the Future Festivals project brings together a network of festivals from Canada and beyond to jointly reimagine the role and responsibilities of publicly funded festivals in the post-COVID era. The network partners include New Now Festival (Essen, Germany), MUTEK (Montreal), imagineNATIVE (Toronto), Mois Multi (Quebec), send+receive (Winnipeg), New Forms (Vancouver), and MUTEK.MX / MUTEK.JP. During the project's co-design process in the spring of 2023, partners identified shared challenges related to accessibility, resilience, and sustainability.

Over 18 months, each participating festival hosts a Future Festivals Lab, bringing together the group, its extended network, and selected experts to address these fundamental festival creation issues. The goal is to deeply analyze shared problems and prototype solutions, ranging from immediate and easily implementable measures to more ambitious and long-term proposals.

MUTEK acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts