The Outdoor Arts Italia Festival Network is a structured cooperation space for festivals, events and operators working in performing arts in public space and contemporary circus. Not an informal network of occasional exchanges, but a relational infrastructure designed to create continuity, shared vision and systemic impact.
Why a network?
Festivals represent the fundamental nodes of the sector: places of artistic experimentation, relationship with territories, encounters between artists, communities and operators. However, too often these experiences remain fragmented, tied to single occasions or unstructured relationships. The Network was born to transform this widespread richness into a shared ecosystem, capable of:
Facilitating artist and curator circulation through coordinated programming and professional accompaniment pathways
Creating reciprocity chains between national and international contexts
Aligning practices, languages and operational methods among festivals with different identities
Enhancing the role of festivals as cultural mediators and builders of sustainable artistic careers
Generating common projects that amplify the resources and impact of each festival
How the Network works
The Network operates through thematic tables, shared projects and cooperation actions that respond to concrete sector needs:
International focus events hosted in Italian festivals (such as Focus Basque Street Arts)
European mobility programmes for artists and operators (Boarding Pass Plus)
Artist exchanges and coordinated programming among network festivals
Training and leadership for sector operators (CLIMB)
Development of shared tools: guidelines, manifesto, ethical cooperation principles
The Network's work is not only operational: it is also a space for collective learning, where "relationship-building skills" — often implicit competence — become explicit, transferable and made available to the sector.
Who participates
The Network brings together festivals and events in public space arts, production centres, hybrid projects and cultural intermediary organisations active throughout the national territory:
Festivals and events:
Tutti Matti per Colorno (Parma) · Terminal Festival (Udine) · Lunathica (Turin) · Magie al Borgo (Bergamo) · Eccentrici (Bergamo) · Appennini in Circo (Bologna) · Equilibri Festival (Casalecchio di Reno) · AsfaltArt Festival (Merano) · Festival Internazionale di Circo Teatro Battiti (Rome) · Sanza – Festival dell'Accoglienza (Sanza, SA) · BAM Circus Festival (Milan)
Production centres and spaces:
Teatro Ritrovato – Faber Teater (Casalborgone, TO) · Officine Caos – Stalker Teatro (Turin) · Direzioni Altre – Twain Centro di Produzione Danza (Viterbo-Rome)
Companies and intermediation:
PEM Teatro (Milan-Padua-Lecce) · DOC Educational (Verona)
An open and evolving platform
The Festival Network is an open platform, capable of adapting to different scales: local, national, international. Its ambition is to become a reference infrastructure for cooperation among festivals, a recognisable interlocutor in sector development processes and a fertile environment for new projects.
Not a closed network, but an ecosystem that grows through stratification, trust and shared work, where each festival maintains its own identity while contributing to a broader vision. A place where the sum of relationships produces not only exchange, but systemic value, continuity and new possibilities for artists, operators and territories.
Want to participate or learn more?
The Festival Network is open to new organisations that share the vision of structured, long-term cooperation. If you are a festival, event, production centre or cultural operator interested in building this ecosystem together, fill in the form below.