Thank you for 2023!

The year 2023 of the ANTI festival included many wonderful encounters and collaborations internationally, locally and nationally.

In January, we continued collaboration in the New Local development work group convened by the Arts Promotion Center FInland in architecture policy. The final seminar of the working group was organized as part of the ANTI PRE-PARTY in September in Kuopio.

In February, commissioned by the city of Kuopio, we again started the Shared Futures workshops for Kuopio residents over 60, facilitated by artist-facilitators Emma Fält and Anna-Maria Väisänen. The participants of the workshops toured later in the spring performing in service centers in Kuopio. The ending of the project was celebrated in the form of an exhibition and performance in December.

In March, we produced a tour performance of Kaino Wennerstrand‘s work Fixit. The piece was seen in Warsaw as part of the closing conference of the international Face to Faith Creative Europe project (2020–2023).

In April, the ANTI team was already working closely on the autumn festival program, and we got to announce the first parts of the September festival program.

In May, we continued our collaborations on international and national projects. Among other projects, we cooperated with the Latvian Homo Novus International Theatre Festival in the Festivals’ Path project as well as in the ANTI Festival International Prize for Live Art nomination process together with an international advisory group.

In June, we organized a lovely summer party for Kuopio’s local coalition in cooperation with the SoiJaTanssit event. The local coalition of Kuopio is a network open to all Kuopio residents, which gathers together for workshops and especially events focused on the development of the Kuopio Konepaja area throughout the year. The local coalition is part of the Future DiverCities 2 project (Creative Europe 2022–2026) in Kuopio.

In July, we were having our summer holidays.

In August, we participated in the local Meidän Kuopio festival with future walks connected to the Shared Futures project. In support of the walking performance Plan 884, which is part of the national Kulkue project, we also organized open workshops in Konepaja area in August, where the area under planning was explored from new perspectives through artistic exercises.

In September, we organized the 22nd ANTI festival. The festival’s program once again reached an engaged audience to site specific contemporary arts. Visitors to the festival came from all over Finland and international performing arts audiences also found their way to the ANTI festival and Kuopio. All ANTI festival events that required seat reservations were fully booked, and there would have been more people coming to the events than the event facilities allowed. For the first time this year, we also tried the PRE-PARTY programme, specially designed for the Kuopio audience on the weekend before the festival.

In October, we already started preparing for the next year’s activities and projects.

In November, the Arts Promotion Center Finland awarded the ANTI festival with the state award for the social impact of art. We gratefully accepted the award at a celebration in Helsinki, where ANTI festival’s Managing Director and Lead Curator Elisa Itkonen had the precious opportunity to deliver one of the award winners’ speeches.

Our operations were financially stable thanks to multi-year cooperation agreements. We also constantly strive to create new local, national and international partnerships, projects and networks.

We warmly thank our audiences, artists and all partners and financiers for the past year!