Tokyo Festival Farm is a new framework that brings together all development initiatives within Tokyo Festival, a festival for performing arts. It was created by combining Asian Performing Arts Farm (APAF), a platform promoting exchange and growth among young artists in Asia, with Festival/Tokyo (F/T)’s Research Program and Education & Outreach Program. There are three categories: “School,” a place to meet and learn, “Internship,” an on-site training opportunity, and “Lab,” for exploring research and development. By having this range of programs based around open calls and developing a collaborative interdisciplinary and interregional approach, Tokyo Festival Farm aims to foster professionals capable of free movement across all kinds of borders, which will become increasingly fluid in the future.

We are pleased to announce that APAF (Asian Performing Arts Farm) will transform into the new Tokyo Festival Farm. While the former served as a Tokyo Festival initiative to nurture talent and create a network for emerging Asian artists to collaborate and experiment together–beyond stylistic, national or cultural boundaries–the latter integrates research, development, and educational programs previously run by Tokyo Festival and Festival/Tokyo and seeks to broaden and elevate its overall vision.

This year, two directors will lead the new initiative. APAF’s Junnosuke Tada will continue to serve as Director along with Kaku Nagashima, newly appointed as Co-Director. We will establish guidelines based on the Communication Design position introduced in APAF2020, and are fully committed to promoting meaningful communication based on respect for others, and creating a harassment-free environment that allows individuals to freely explore their creativity.

The performing arts have transcended borders and brought people with different backgrounds together. With developments in communication and transportation, globalization has made the lives of others more familiar. Today, we live in an increasingly transcultural and transdisciplinary environment, in which frameworks such as nationality, ethnicity, and language begin to dissolve and diverse individuals move across various fields.   

At present, the word “international” refers to “the mixing of previously distinct cultures” and “circulating outside of the country,” but in future the meaning will likely shift towards indicating “the values of our complex world where different elements are constantly mixing with one another.” We are also seeing the role of the performing arts, a mirror that reflects our world, transform.

As an international initiative to nurture young talent, Tokyo Festival Farm’s mission is to offer an opportunity for artists to experience firsthand a transcultural and transdisciplinary environment that dissolves borders and allows them to encounter diverse values, with the aim of strengthening their ability to make sense of our increasingly complex world; to produce professionals who transcend nations and cultures in their interdisciplinary work; and to provide a sustainable platform to maintain and achieve the above. We believe this endeavor has the power to resist the emerging waves of division that accompany increasing diversification around the world. 

We hope you’ll continue to support our renewed and transformed performing arts Farm into the future.

Last year, under the theme “Anti-Body Experiment,” APAF2020 reassessed the potential of the online world and physical bodies, experimenting with developing resistance against “not being able to gather.” For this year’s Tokyo Festival Farm 2021, we propose the theme “Why Cities?” in consideration of the variety around the world regarding COVID-19 infections, from spread to containment. We question our metropolitan ways of life, each of which has distinct regional and national characteristics while addressing the common issues of economics, efficiency, consumption, and production. How will things change in the future, and what will remain the same? How will those changes affect each or all of us? Who gets to decide our values, fluctuating as they do with scale and distance? For the full range of people involved in this initiative, both Farm participants and audience members alike, we offer this as a prompt for collective thought.

June 2021
Junnosuke Tada, Tokyo Festival Farm Director

Online Orientation in English for Applicants for Asian Performing Arts Camp
Date and Time: Wednesday, June 9, 2021 8:00 to 8:45 PM (JST)
Venue: Streamed on Tokyo Festival YouTube channel
Speakers: Asian Performing Arts Camp facilitators JK Anicoche and Keiko Yamaguchi

Tokyo Festival Farm Guidelines

To ensure a safe creative space that is non-discriminatory to individuals of all social categories, the Tokyo Festival Farm will follow the “Tokyo Festival Farm Guidelines”

Tokyo Festival Farm Guidelines

Organized by Tokyo Festival Executive Committee [Toshima City, Toshima Mirai Cultural Foundation, Tokyo Metropolitan Foundation for History and Culture (Tokyo Metropolitan Theatre & Arts Council Tokyo)]
Supported by the Agency for Cultural Affairs, Government of Japan in the fiscal 2021