BounceBack! Festival

(Image courtesy of BounceBack )

25th June 2021

By Juliette Moisan

The presence of COVID-19 has been a pivotal point in our lives for over a year and a half now. It has harshly impacted a lot of sectors, especially the fields of culture and arts, as they were essentially put on hold. Now more than before, we need escapism, which can be found both through art itself, as well as through performing. By setting up its own online festival, the youth-led movement ART31 is giving a voice to young artists in Kent and an opportunity for them to share their talent.

The BounceBack! Festival will be taking place in Canterbury, in collaboration with the Gulbenkian, from the 24 to the 27 June. While most events will be online or live-streamed, others, especially networking ones, will be taking place in person during the festival.

ART31 selected the name of the festival, BounceBack!, to highlight the resilience of young people and their ability to get back on their feet after having felt their needs were ignored by the government’s handling of the pandemic. A lot of young people continued to be creative throughout lockdown, many using their art as an outlet to exteriorise what they were going through. BounceBack constitutes an effort to promote young talents, as well as to highlight that life continues as we start looking ahead, past COVID restrictions.

While this event is co-organised by a team of young people ranging from 16 to 25 years old, organisers also helped coordinate the event. We spoke with Emma Willatts, one of the organisers, about the event’s importance in a post-COVID world.

Emma especially insisted on the importance of keeping young people at the heart of the project: "It's incredibly important to me that we are not just ticking a box when it comes to working with young people, but that they are at the heart of every decision made. For this festival, they have absolutely torn our initial ideas to shreds… which is amazing!"

The members of the organisation were given full agency to create the event they wanted to represent them and their work, which is one of the core principles of the festival.

(Image courtesy of BounceBack )

Each of the four days of the festival is filled with different events, live streams and networking opportunities. You can find a rich selection of events, ranging from dance performances to stand-up. Phoenix Performing Arts will be performing and JV2 will offer an exclusive access to their new show, alongside theatre performances and music by GTown and Pie Factory.

The first day of the festival kicks off with a series of short films that can be found online, and a collective called Canvas4Equality will be taking over the festival's Instagram account. Additionally, some projects have received funds or have been created especially for this project. The main aim was to give young people the ability and the opportunity to be creative, as well as the means and the space to create content and share it with other people.

Most of this festival will be happening online to follow COVID guidelines and provide access to the greatest number of people possible. The team behind the festival is working hard to make it a recurring event to bolster the presence of young people in the arts, which can often be dismissed.

(Image courtesy of BounceBack )

You can find the events on the Gulbenkian’s page here. Running from the 24th to the 27th of June, performances will be running for free on the ART31 YouTube channel.

Let us know in the comments below if you attend any section of BounceBack!, we would love to hear your experiences!