VIA
Building more inclusive futures
through the arts.
An international arts ecosystem with the VIA Festival at its heart — where locally rooted artistic life connects with gatherings and relationships that continue.
Why VIA
Art as encounter.
Participation as creation.
Gathering as possibility.
Connection as a path toward more inclusive futures.
We understand festivals and artistic gatherings not merely as showcases, but as spaces of encounter, ritual and shared presence — moments in which people experience, question, feel, listen, imagine and make meaning together. These encounters can nurture empathy, belonging and wellbeing. Accessibility, equity and care are not additions to this vision; they are part of how we understand the purpose of the arts.
The heart of VIA
The VIA Festival
The Festival remains VIA's public heart and main artistic purpose — an international festival that does not have to happen in one city, under one institution, or through one curatorial centre.
Artists, organisations and communities around the world create locally rooted artistic activities connected through a shared festival identity and common values. Each initiative can respond to its own context, community, resources and practices.
Locally rooted. Connected by shared purpose.
VIA does not seek to replace existing arts festivals. Existing festivals can participate while retaining their own identity. New locally rooted festival initiatives can also emerge.
VIA provides the framework.
The community creates the festival.
Local expression
Artists, organisations and communities organise their own events, in their own contexts, at their own pace.
Shared values
Participation under a shared identity — collaboration rather than competition; connection without central control.
Independent festivals
VIA offers a framework for connection that complements local cultural ecosystems — without centrally curating every performance.
Collective movement
Each community retains its identity. Each organisation retains its autonomy. Together, they create the VIA Festival.
Beyond the Festival
Encounters do not have to end when a festival ends.
People meet through artistic experiences. Those relationships may lead to conversations, collaborations, gatherings, learning, exchanges or future Festival activities.
The Festival remains at the heart of VIA. Around it, VIA is growing shared ways for people to gather, discover one another and continue — and the Festival is not necessarily everyone's first encounter.
Gathering Through VIA
People gather.
Relationships begin.
People need ways to come together before, after and beyond festivals. Gatherings matter in their own right — and for many people, a gathering may be their first encounter with VIA.
A gathering might be a workshop, retreat, exchange, residency, meeting, camp or conference. It might involve ten people or hundreds. It might eventually become part of a Festival — or it might never need to. A gathering does not have to call itself a festival to belong within VIA.
- Workshops
- Retreats
- Exchanges
- Residencies
- Meetings
- Camps
- Conferences
VIA provides shared infrastructure that can help people organise and co-manage gatherings — so communities can invite, plan and take responsibility together, without forcing one organisational model. Gathering Management does not replace Festival Management; the two can work alongside each other.
VIA Network
Relationships that continue
Festivals and gatherings create encounters. Behind every performance, organisation, gathering and artistic practice are people. VIA Network helps people and organisations discover one another — and, where they choose, remain discoverable.
Technology is not the network.
The relationships are the network.
Someone might ask who is practising a form of theatre in another country, which organisations work at the intersection of arts and health, or who they met at a gathering last year. Discovery can begin a relationship; a relationship may lead to a gathering or a future Festival collaboration.
Through VIA Atlas, connections can also be understood geographically — helping people discover practices, organisations, festivals and gatherings across places without turning private locations into public data.
How VIA works
There is no single path through VIA
You do not have to enter VIA in one particular way. Relationships begin differently — and can move in many directions.
- FestivalGatheringthrough relationships
- GatheringNetworkthrough continuing connection
- NetworkGatheringthrough discovery
- NetworkFestivalthrough collaboration
- GatheringFestivalthrough shared artistic life
- FestivalNetworkthrough people who met
What's happening
Current activity across VIA
Festival editions, gatherings, selected work and open invitations — when they are ready to be shared.
Public Festival and gathering activity will appear here as it is announced. Meanwhile, the invitation to VIA remains open — through festivals, gatherings and relationships that continue.
Opportunities
Open invitations
Participation remains voluntary, with no submission fees. Open calls are one way into VIA — not the only way.
When festivals and gatherings invite applications, they will appear here.
Shared commitments
What connects us is not a single aesthetic
What connects VIA participants is a willingness to contribute to a cultural ecosystem that is more accessible, equitable, participatory, connected and caring.
We encourage work attentive to accessibility, equity, wellbeing and participation — with care for one another, local autonomy, and openness to intercultural exchange. Inclusion is not only inviting more people into structures that already exist; it is also allowing different people and communities to shape those structures — and to imagine new ones.
We warmly invite you to participate in VIA.
Not through the work of a single organisation or the vision of a single curator — but through the imagination, generosity, knowledge, care and collaboration of people who believe that culture should be created with—and belong to—everyone.
You might first meet VIA through the Festival. You might be invited to a gathering. You might discover someone through VIA Network. Artists, organisations, educators, researchers, community practitioners, organisers, volunteers and participants are all welcome — and there is no required order.
The arts can help build more inclusive futures.