Arts festival

An arts festival is a festival that features the arts in a wide sense of the word, not just visual arts. Arts festivals typically feature a mixed program that might include music, literature, comedy, children's entertainment, science, street theatre etc. and are presented most usually in venues over a period of time ranging from as short as a day or a weekend to a month. Each event within the program will usually be separately ticketed. They are largely curated by an Artistic Director, though this genre also includes fringe festivals which are generally open access. Arts festivals are therefore distinctive from greenfield festivals (typically weekend camping festivals such as Glastonbury) and Visual Arts Festivals, or "art festivals" (which concentrate on just the visual arts).

Probably the two oldest arts festivals are in England. The Three Choirs Festival in the West of England was established as a "yearly musical assembly" by 1719. The other is the Norfolk and Norwich Festival which first took place in 1772. The largest arts festival in England today is the Brighton Festival Fringe.

Leading arts festivals include the Edinburgh Festival in Edinburgh, Adelaide Festival of Arts in Adelaide, the Biennale of Sydney, Festival d'Avignon in Avignon, France, and Tongyeong International Music Festival in Tongyeong, Korea and Sanskruti Arts Festival, Upvan, India. One-off arts festivals have included the Liverpool08 European Capital of Culture in 2008.

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