Boroughs’ Festival briefing 2023
This page is to keep you as key partners of the festival, up to date with the different plans and outputs of this years festival.
The aim is to be able to deliver a genuinely London-wide festival that has a legacy of size and volume, whilst also ensuring that a relatively small festival team can support contributors from all backgrounds to open and create unique events that will engage a diverse audience.
Taking on board the feedback received, this year the festival team is creating more resources to be able to support contributors through the process of planning, submitting and opening. This will be available as an online Library of Resources, as well as online group briefings and in person drop-ins.
The buttons below are linked to the core documents from this new Library of Resources with some additional information that is more specific to boroughs. This should help if you are planning on submitting for the festival as a contributor and ensure that you be in a better position to help recruit the places you want to see in the festival.
News and Updates
News and Updates
See more of our comms to Contributors
Click here to see.
Online surgeries and support
We are running online surgeries every Friday, 12pm-1pm. These are for Contributors new and returning. You can share this with your network so that they can book a 15-minute slot.
Go here to book. Select the Friday you want from the calendar on the lefthand side of the page, then click on a time slot to book it. Spaces are limited.
Submissions are open!
We are accepting new proposals and returning Contributors submissions. You can signpost Contributors to this page. If you would like more help with mobilising buildings in your borough, here is a one pager.
If Submissions are completed in May and before the deadline of the 1st of June, Contributors will be part of our early-bird Submissions. This means they will get a number of extra things that should make their opening even more successful, for instance they are more likely to be included in our press and marketing outputs, their listing will be published first so it has a higher chance for people to see it and they are guaranteed to get festival promotional materials.
Presence across the city and two weekends
The feedback was that although the two weekends are great, Contributors missed the way everything in their neighbourhood was open at the same time.
We have created three different tools to help create dense pockets of festival activity, similar to when it was just the one weekend.
💚 The first is guidance for which of the weekends it is best for you to open depending on what borough you are based in. Please note, this is guidance; if you can’t open on that weekend, we’d still rather you submitted to be in the festival than not at all.
💚 The second is that if a Submission is approved, Contributors will be able to see others in their area who have also been approved and when they are opening. If they are a public building and their details are online, they can also reach out to coordinate their openings or plan something at a neighbourhood level.
💚 Finally, we are continuing our Neighbourhood initiative. If at least five Contributors within walking distance of each other coordinate their openings and events, they will be published as a Neighbourhood collection when the site goes live in the summer.
💚It’s also worth noting that nearly 80% of last year’s Contributors said they would recommend their neighbours contribute to the festival, so use this opportunity to connect neighbours and invite others in your area to open-up too.