Freedom Festival Arts Trust is an independent organisation very passionate and committed to supporting artists to develop new ideas and produce new work nationally and internationally. 

The original work and artists that we support and present is an essential part of our success as a world class creative producing house and gives our audiences unique and relevant creative experiences. Committed to innovation in art in public space, we encourage and support artists to experiment with new approaches, practices and technologies with a focus on environmental sustainability, technological innovation, diversity and social relevance and reform.

We hold a valued position amongst our industry partners, both as presenters and producers who support ideas from the beginning into development and onwards with a view to offer both presenting and touring opportunities both nationally and internationally.

We work closely with our existing networks particularly the Creative Europe-funded InSitu network to support UK artists into international opportunities and to expand their touring markets.
In our experience, artists require a bespoke support programme alongside any commissioning fees to allow them to truly be supported to develop genuinely innovative, world-class work, from ideas into development towards production.
We have a core team of experts with extensive experience of more than 20 years of supporting artists in this way and aspire to enhance and formalise the level of support we can give.

Currently we do this in a number of ways including:

• Commissioning multiple artists locally and nationally every year
• Financial support
• World-class skills workshops and participatory activities led by experienced National and International artists
• Mentoring and residential opportunities for artists to develop ideas.
• Listening to artists and linking them to opportunities and potential collaborators nationally and internationally
• Holding the space (philosophically and physically) for artists to develop ideas more rigorously and in more depth
• Working with cross-sector experts to influence and support ideas development and inform content

Our focus will always be on supporting artists developing work for public space that is:

• Relevant and innovative
• Tackles larger issues
• Adopts new technologies
• Provides new and rigorous forms of creative participation
• Always accessible to as many different audiences as possible
• Nurturing and developing the next generation of artists for public space
• We will work with and support artists who are new to art in public space, are established or coming from other disciplines, and we will always look to develop new young creative talent.

If you have an idea you're developing and would like to discuss this with us, meet with one of our team and to tell us more please email info@freedomfestival.co.uk.
We do get a lot of enquiries and are a small team, so please do bear with us if we don't reply immediately.

Future Commissions and Applications

Our festival programme is curated by our in-house artistic team and led by our Artistic Director and CEO. We collaborate with extraordinary artists from Hull, the UK and internationally to create and present unmissable world-class experiences for our audiences.

If you are interested in performing at the Freedom Festival, please send a proposal of your intended work to artists@freedomfestival.co.uk with the following information:

• An outline of your show/work
• A bio of you/your company
• Links to videos/images/sound clips of your work
• Cost and budget breakdown
• Tech requirements
• Links to website and social media channels
• Details of past and upcoming shows
• Any additional information

Please note: We receive a large amount of creative submissions annually, we also commission and produce a lot of the festival content in house and also work with various creative networks and touring programs nationally and internationally, this makes us a very busy small team and means we are not able to reply in person to every submission.