Innibos - Letters from the Future: Introduction

Background & Overview.
Thank you for taking part in our research project!   We are grateful to have your involvement in imagining the future of the  Innibos  festival, by creating    a 'Letter from the Future'.    This activity is part of  a  research project called   Future Festivals South Africa: Possibilities for the Age of Covid-19, and it has two aims:

1.  To provide a  creative way to understand    how people involved in Innibos have experienced the pandemic, and how they anticipate it will affect the festival in the next few years.
2.  To provide an opportunity for people involved in Innibos to creatively imagine new possibilities for the festival in the future.
   

 The letters are an important part of our data set for this research project. The findings will be published in project reports and journal articles.  You can read more about the research and ethical consideration  of the project, in this information sheet.  The Future Festivals South Africa project will also use these letters as the basis for collaboratively developing ideas – alongside our festival partners – for practical steps that could be taken to enable South African festivals to survive and thrive.

​How To Create Your Letter

• Imagine that it is now the year 2030, and you have just performed at the Innibos festival.    Please write a letter from 2030 back to yourself in 2021, explaining what your experience of the festival was like.    For example, beginning like this: 

You can download all of these guidelines in a  handy PDF file here below:

Innibos participant brief letters from the future
File Size:	123 kb
File Type:	pdf

Download File

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Dear X,
 
The year is 2030 and you have just performed at the Innibos festival. A lot has changed since you entered the song competition at the festival in 2021! Let me explain how the festival works nowadays, ten years after Covid-19 turned everything upside down...

• Your contribution can be in Afrikaans or English, whichever you prefer
  
• Your letter can be as short or as long as you like! 
  
• Alternatively, you are welcome to make an audio recording of your 'letter' , speaking back to yourself from the  festival in 2030.   You are also welcome to create an  image of the festival in 2030, instead of a written or audio letter. For example, drawing a picture of the Innibos festival in 2030, or creating an image using  computer software.

• In your letter / image,    you may wish to respond to some of the seven questions below. These questions are prompts to consider (you don’t have to answer them all!).

Please feel free to write your letter in any way that you would like to, allowing your imagination of the 2030 Innibos festival to develop in perhaps unexpected directions. These seven questions are meant to spark your imagination, not to constrain it.

1. How has the Innibos festival changed in the years since the pandemic began? And in what ways is the festival the same as before Covid? 
2. Where is the Innibos festival? Is it in the same location as before the pandemic? 
3.  Who is your audience? Has the audience changed, in terms of who the people are / the demographics? 
4.  How do you reach your audiences? Have performance formats changed? Are you physically at the Innibos festival? 
5.  Imagine yourself creating a work for the Innibos festival in 2030: how has your creative process changed? Do you develop work (perhaps for new performance formats) through processes that you didn’t use before the pandemic? 
6.  What have you learnt about the value of the  Innibos   festival? Is the festival important? Why is it important? Who is it important to? 
7.  Overall, have things changed for the better? Have things changed for the worse? Both?

 
Please feel free to make the letter / image as creative as you would like to!   

Next Steps

• Once your contribution is  ready for submission, please  click on the  take part link here below
  
• We will provide further information on your participation and the ethics of the research  project before inviting you to upload your file
  

I need more support ...
 

• If you have any questions about the ‘Letters from the Future’ activity, or about the project overall, please contact us via the form at the bottom of this page or email  us at futurefestivalssouthafrica@gmail.com
  

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