Slow Performing Arts Festivals for improved wellbeing, mental health and social inclusion

Festival SPA is an international project that connects three festivals with the desire to find and test festival models aimed at slowing down festivals’ tempos and creating a more pleasant environment for artists, visitors and festival workers.

The project is being carried out by Bunker, Ljubljana (a lead partner) organizing the Mladi levi festival, the New Theatre Institute of Latvia organizing the Homo Novus festival and Santarcangelo dei Teatri organizing the Santarcangelo Festival.

We want to develop structural solutions within festivals that will further contribute to improving the mental health, well-being and social inclusion of festival workers and audiences. To this end, we will create safe, soft, slow spaces and conditions that will nurture festival workers and all visitors, so that we can enjoy art slowly and improve our lives.
The project is focused on changes of festival schedules, where we want to consciously create moments of slowing down, relaxation and nurturing inclusivity. Each of the participating festivals starts from its own environment, needs and target groups. The project is accompanied by four experts in the field of connecting art and social inclusion, mental health and well-being, who research the needs of festival workers and target audience groups in order to respond with organizational changes, production innovations and artistically guided practices.

In 2025, the project focused on festival teams visiting partner festivals, exchanging experiences, and initially observing, recording, and reflecting on the state of participating festivals, which already have a tradition of caring for creating a pleasant environment.

In 2026, three festivals will program and commission artist-led events: festival parties, festival centers, and performances focused on slowing down the viewing experience. Artists will be invited to create gestures of care for the audience, and festival centers will be designed as spas: spaces of rest, peace, recovery, relaxation, and healing. All festivals will design parties as curated artistic events. Experts will develop not only internal recommendations, but also broader public recommendations, so that we can transfer new practices to new festivals, seasons, the entire sector, and beyond.