Placements
Call for Festivals and Alumni!
The Festival Academy, in collaboration with the European Festivals Association (EFA), are teaming up with festivals and organisations worldwide to offer placements for young festival managers and production officers from The Festival Academy' Alumni community.
Festivals and organizations from all over the world are invited to host young festival makers from The Festival Academy's diverse Alumni network by offering them placements or traineeships within their teams.
Festivals makers and production officers from The Festival Academy's Alumni network are invited to apply as participants to have the opportunity to join a placement or traineeship with an established or emerging festival organisation.
The objective is to foster an exchange between EFA and TFAs global festival network and the Academy's Alumni community. Alumni applying for placements will have the opportunity to enrich their skills through hands-on experience and gain fresh insights on their working area, while host cultural organizations will welcome dynamic and passionate professionals who will assist with ongoing projects. The Placements Initiative aims to facilitate extensive cooperation, networking and career opportunities through global collaborations.
- Festivals and Organisations interested in hosting a placement: apply here.
- Alumni from The Festival Academy interested in doing a placement: apply here.
This is an on going open call, registrations are open during all year round, either to apply as a host or as a participant. However, if you are an Alumni interested in doing a placement this year, we recommend to you to apply during March-April 2024. This is to facilitate the overall organization of the program and to reserve your spot, as there is a limited number of places available.
Read more about the structure, requirements and timeline below.
Please do not hesitate to contact The Festival Academy at info@thefestivalacademy.eu should you have any additional questions.
Structure
- Placements can be offered either within the artistic or production teams;
Placements can take place online, in-person or have a hybrid format, depending on the organization's capacities.
- The minimum duration of a placement is one week and depends on what is ideal for your festival, or organisation, and will be agreed upon in an interview with the interested parties.
Requirements for festivals who would like to host a placement
The hosting festival or organisation should ideally offer the selected participant(s):
In case of in-person placement:
- Accommodation
- Local transport
- Food or per diems
- Insurance
In the case of online placements, no minimum requirements are asked from the festival/organisation, and should be agreed upon between the parties.
Requirements for Alumni who would like to do a placement
Participants should:
- Be members of The Festival Academy Alumni community, meaning that your have participated in at least one of our training programmes in the past.
- Be in charge of covering the potential national or international travel costs to the placement or apply for external funding to cover these.
- Review available placements within our Opportunities Booklet
- Select the three preferred placements.
- Fill in the application form. A CV and a motivation letter will be required.
- Send off the application!
Over 1000 Alumni from 100+ countries
The Festival Academy sustains and further develops the Festival Academy Alumni Network that unites more than 1000 participants from 100+ countries who took part in one of our Ateliers for Young Festival Managers, Tailor-Made Ateliers, Festival Production Management Trainings, Ateliers for Solidarity or other activities such as the Online Ateliers.
Placements that happened in 2023
Testimonies from participants:
Click here to read a full diary report from Milena Janković (Atelier Elefsina-Beirut), written during her placement at the Festival Pianistico Internazionale Bartolomeo Cristofori 2021.
"This three-week placement was an invaluable learning experience. I felt so lucky that I experienced the festival from the inside and also enjoyed lots of the performances. Thanks to the team head's arrangement and trust, I felt very involved in the team and got acquainted with the workplace pretty quickly."
"I had the possibility to talk to a lot of artists that was truly interesting and inspiring."
"It was great to see what we had discussed in Module I of the Atelier in real life in Module II. It was a fantastic experience and a credit to the course on the whole. I could not recommend this structure any more! Everything we had discussed I saw first hand and Module 1 was a perfect introduction and prepared me very well, I feel."
"Creating a platform and offering placements to young production managers helps them grow more professional, gather experience and find inspiration in other (older) people/festivals so they can introduce improvements in their own festivals."
"Overwhelmingly exciting, challenging, exhausting, and as I now hope to pursue a career in this new direction... life-changing!"
"This was the first time that I worked within a festival of such grand scale and it made me understand the importance of a good working system, communication, and leadership. It also made me realize my weaknesses and motivated me to improve in my future work."
"It truly was an incredible experience to work for a festival concentrating on a different medium - art, technology and society rather than performing arts which has been my primary focus until now. I gained a great appreciation and understanding for this field and the delivery of a program of this nature."
"It was an eye-opening and highly rewarding experience."
"I was able to expand my paradigms towards festival and event management. At the placement, I had the opportunity to learn from and know more Production Managers and artists around the world and also established connections that I believe would be mutually beneficial in the future."
"An inspiration that will guide me in the future as a production manager, to approach things in a whole new positive way."