Fluid Festival
Birmingham UK, 2017
A weekend of new Queer sound and music took place across five venues in Birmingham and included a panel discussion and main stage performances at venues in Minerva Works in Digbeth, closing with Sunday brunch performances in the Gay village.
Venues included: Town Hall Birmingham, Vivid Projects & Stryx, Nicholson School of Dance & Eden Bar.
Supported by Sound and Music’s Composer-Curator programme, Birmingham Weekender and Arts Council England.
fluidfestival.org
Fluid is a pilot festival that is designed to both respond to this call to action and to act as a testing ground for the concept of a festival of new queer music that transcends musical genre ranging from the classical tradition to the popular, the orchestral to the electronic.
Fluid is conceived as a research and development project concerned with scoping the field and finding the composers and artists that already operate in this terrain, and testing the water for sustained and even more ambitious events. The selected composers and musicians will reflect the multiplicity of Queer identities in terms of sexual and gender identities. The composers will also reflect a range of sonic forms and musical genres from classical traditions through to current happenings in digital, cyber and popular culture.
What they will all share in common is that they will each be invited to respond the aims of ethos of the festival and employ their own distinct experience and approach in developing and presenting newly composed works.
The aims of the pilot:
• Create a platform to present new music composed by Queer identifying composers
• Commission and curate a challenging programme of new music
• Provide a forum to share ideas and foster new collaborations
• Enable debate and discussion during the festival and associated radio programming
• Bring together a range of partners across genres, forms and disciplines • Test out ideas and ways working
Fluid is conceived as a research and development project concerned with scoping the field and finding the composers and artists that already operate in this terrain, and testing the water for sustained and even more ambitious events. The selected composers and musicians will reflect the multiplicity of Queer identities in terms of sexual and gender identities. The composers will also reflect a range of sonic forms and musical genres from classical traditions through to current happenings in digital, cyber and popular culture.
What they will all share in common is that they will each be invited to respond the aims of ethos of the festival and employ their own distinct experience and approach in developing and presenting newly composed works.
The aims of the pilot:
• Create a platform to present new music composed by Queer identifying composers
• Commission and curate a challenging programme of new music
• Provide a forum to share ideas and foster new collaborations
• Enable debate and discussion during the festival and associated radio programming
• Bring together a range of partners across genres, forms and disciplines • Test out ideas and ways working