Partner Article

Ilana Mitchell on the Wunderbar Festival

Ask the Expert

**Name:**Ilana Mitchell

**Position:**Creative director and curator

**Organisation:**Wunderbar Festival

Contact details: www.wunderbarfestival.co.uk

Synopsis of your area of expertise:I am an artist by profession and a business woman by nature. Combining the two, I am curator and creative director of interactive arts festival, Wunderbar, which we have brought back to the region for its second year. Kicking off from October 31st, this year’s festival will see a week-long series of over 20 exhibitions, performances and events covering the Newcastle and Gateshead area.

For those who aren’t aware what is Wunderbar?

Wunderbar is a producer of dynamic, creative projects that place the audience at the heart of the experience. We bring our work to unusual places and spaces and invite people to take part; often the work only comes alive if people get involved with it. Our projects are led by artists, but fuelled by unique contributions from those who take part, responding with creativity and playfulness to issues of relevance to real people, real places and real time.

How did your involvement with the festival begin?

I have always been passionate about art and after graduating from Newcastle University with a degree in Fine Art I became very familiar with the arts and culture scene in the region, organising and instigating numerous projects. With support from Arts Council England, I worked with Birmingham-based performance festival Fierce Earth, and fellow curator Beth Bate – now Chair of Wunderbar’s Board – to establish Wunderbar in 2008, and we held our first festival in 2009.

On a day-to-day basis what does your role entail?

Given the diverse nature of the projects each day is varied. The team responsible for Wunderbar is quite small so roles are often interchangeable, so I’ll often be found doing admin, fundraising, making the tea… I am however predominantly responsible for organising and developing the events; this requires travelling to meet artists, partners and sponsors – this year we’re working with, for example, Silverlink Holdings, BALTIC, Arts Council, and the two main city libraries. We work hard to establish great partnerships which allow us to punch above our weight.

What events are included in this year’s Wunderbar festival?

All events have a wonderful Wunderbar twist, for example artist Ellie Harrison is presenting the ‘Desk Chair Disco’ in which office workers bring along their desk chair for a party in a transformed empty office unit. It aims to redress the life/work balance - which can so often tip the other way.

A project that is less playful but has a core Wunderbar ethos is ‘Anniversary – an act of Memory’ by artist Monica Ross, in which 18 participants will attempt to recite the UN Declaration of Human Rights by heart and entirely in Sign Language. Some reciters are deaf, some hearing, some learning the language from scratch. It highlights sign languages as language, and the rights of those with different abilities through a creative project that makes people stop and think.

Which event are you most looking forward to?

Its hard to specify a particular event as each has its own intrigue and element of excitement. The beauty of Wunderbar is that it offers a variety of events and experiences. I am really looking forward to ‘A SCHOOL’, where during the week visitors can come to our purpose built Schoolhouse and take part in lessons devised by a group of artists working with ten Year 9 students from Burnside College, Wallsend. This is a good example of Wunderbar - as the events are based on audience participation we have no idea what their outcome will be. We simply provide the ingredients and the audience do the cooking!

Where will the events be held?

The events are spread across numerous locations within Newcastle and Gateshead. For a full programme of event times and venues or even to get involved in events visit our website www.wunderbarfestival.co.uk.

Do you think arts festivals such as Wunderbar are significant to the region?

The entire festival is based on and around the audience and I think it is of the utmost importance to have events in the region that people can feel some ownership of. Not only does it build participant confidence it encourages community integration and celebration. Wunderbar epitomises the regions reputation for fun, friendliness, creativity and culture.

The first Wunderbar was in 2009, do you feel it was a successful event?

Despite the flourishing art culture in the North East there is nothing else quite like Wunderbar - I think is our greatest appeal. The first Wunderbar had an incredible amount of audience participation as well as receiving coverage from broad local and national media such as BBC’s Newsround and page 3 of the Evening Chronicle. We sold out pretty much all our ticketed projects – but as our audience is so much wider than just those who buy tickets it’s hard to measure that way. Our core ambition is to get people involved and encourage people to talk about our idea outside of the arts – and we definitely did that through media and our participants.

Do you think this year’s Wunderbar will be as successful as the first?

This event takes its lead from the first – having already executed one festival we can analyse what was a success and what was less successful against that. We’re working hard to measure people’s participation beyond just attending an event. We are also encouraging the audience to consider what’s behind our events. For example in the ‘Human Library’ books are people and instead of reading, people are invited into conversations. The project aims to confront discrimination as each book is someone who has life experiences that may have been misunderstood by stigmatisation or stereotyping – this offers a playful way to meet the people behind the labels.

What are the biggest challenges you face when organising an event of this magnitude?

Being a small organisation the biggest challenge we face is funding. Many of our events are free for the audiences to participate in, therefore as an organisation we need to raise enough money to make the events happen. As well as being a challenge and very competitive fundraising is quite time consuming – but we are working on being creative with our fundraising too!

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Ruth Mitchell .