About Tokyo Festival Farm
Tokyo Festival Farm is a framework for education outreach and creative talent development within Tokyo Festival. It was launched in 2021 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.
This year, Tokyo Festival Farm will be holding various programs under two categories: “Lab” for supporting the growth of emerging artists through research and development, and “School” for education outreach. "Lab" aims to cultivate young professionals who are able to freely navigate the many increasingly fluid borders of our world. The initiative encourages artists to explore the interdisciplinary and interregional "transfield" through collaboration with others. “School” provides young audiences, mainly university students, with opportunities to explore and interact through stage works by attending lectures, participating in talk events, and writing reports.
Tokyo Festival Farm Lab Guidelines
To ensure a safe creative space that is non-discriminatory to individuals of all social categories, the Tokyo Festival Farm Lab will follow the “Tokyo Festival Farm Lab Guidelines”
Tokyo Festival Farm 2022 Theme: Unlearning Cities
“Cities ≠ Gathering”
This year’s Tokyo Festival Farm 2022 will be held under the theme “Unlearning Cities.” Drawing on last year’s core question, “Why Cities?,” this year we aim to actively reassess our understanding of the city as a site of gathering. In recent years, the final products of Tokyo Festival Farm’s international online programs have shown us that the purpose and function of the “online” are shifting—from sharing information and time to creating actions and experiences. There are increasingly more things that can be done without physically gathering. As we let go of conventional values, perhaps our understanding of the city as a site of gathering will no longer be the standard. Still, I believe cities have a function, and that is to ensure diversity. I feel the potential of cities comes from how they allow a wide spectrum of people to gather and coexist, rather than from sheer numbers.
In this year's program, we will have two teams taking on international co-creation, exploring various possibilities of collaboration with members from different fields and backgrounds.
The online art camp will be holding an open call for participants from all over Asia. For those based in Japan, some programs will be open to visitors, and there are also assistant/internship programs to engage with sites of international co-creation. We hope you also look forward to our education outreach programs aimed at students. In all of our work, we will make efforts to prevent harassment and foster a safe environment for the performing arts based on our guidelines.
The future of this decade still remains uncertain. Tokyo Festival Farm is a site for us to create the future we want to see. We invite you to come and join us.
June 2022
TADA Junnosuke, Tokyo Festival Farm Director
Toward a New Space for Coexistence and Collaboration
Common sense is changing drastically. Even within the field of art, the sensibilities and ideas that were once considered the norm no longer apply. Once effective ways of doing things are not only no longer working today, but are beginning to cause harm. These approaches were likely never harmless to begin with, but what was once overlooked is now clearly destructive or hurtful toward people.
Changes in common sense began even before the pandemic. I believe that this has become more noticeable with the thorough “reconsideration” of behavioral patterns and value systems over the past two and a half years.
Over the past two and a half years, what we have experienced is not so much a process of learning, but rather an “unlearning” or uninstalling of what we had internalized without realizing. It was a time to observe, unravel, and reexamine the value contained within, or lacking in, the things we had unconsciously or uncritically been enjoying and taking part in. How can we build on that to create a form of collective creation and collaboration that is fair and brings everyone joy? How do we rediscover and reconstruct the city as a symbol of coexistence and exchange with others? (And do we need to?) This year’s theme, “Unlearning Cities,” reflects such ambitions.
Tokyo Festival Farm is a place where people who feel wary of conventional approaches and have hopes for a different future can come together to cultivate the soil, sow seeds, and nurture seedlings of change at a time of great shifts in society. If this sounds like something you’d like to be a part of, please join us.
June 2022
NAGASHIMA Kaku, Tokyo Festival Farm Co-Director
