Dear Curators of Crumb,

I hope the Autumn has started well for you.

I know that Crumb is not a place for
announcements, but I hope you do not object to me
briefly drawing your attention to the first
announcement for AV Festival 08 in the North East
of England, below.

We are delighted to be working with Crumb on
aspects of the festival this time (which we will
be able to tell you more about in the coming
months) so I felt it pertinent to let you in on
our sneak preview announcement below .

As some of you know, the AV Festival is a
biennial international festival of electronic
arts, featuring visual art, music and moving
image. The next festival will take place in
February and March 2008, and will examine the
changing face of broadcasting in the light of the
increasing move towards digitisation across
Europe and beyond. I know many of you have
written about this issue close to the theme in
the past, at various times, and I'd be very
interested to know what your thoughts on this
topic are.

With that in mind, I wanted to draw your
attention to our first call for proposals, which
is outlined below. The first call is for a new
sound-based commission (fee UK£5000)
<http://www.avfestival.co.uk/opportunities>.

Very soon we'll also be calling for artists to
help us create radio stations across the North
East region and to work on several other
commissions. We'll also be calling for papers
for our conference, and we'll be coming back to
you then to ask you for your ideas then.

But in the meantime, I hope this is of interest
to some of you and that you'll consider
responding to either this call, or our subsequent
ones.

Sincere apologies for cross-posting!

Very best wishes

Honor Harger
Director,
AV Festival
http://www.avfestival.co.uk/
Subscribe to our mailing list: http://www.avfest.co.uk/subscribe/




_________________________

AV FESTIVAL 08 - FIRST ANNOUNCEMENT


SNEAK PREVIEW & CALL FOR PROPOSALS

AV Festival 08
http://www.avfestival.co.uk/
Newcastle, Gateshead, Middlesbrough, Sunderland, UK

First deadline for proposals: 15 October 2007
http://www.avfestival.co.uk/opportunities

AV Festival is an international festival of
electronic arts, featuring visual art, music and
moving image. A biennial event, the festival
takes place in Newcastle, Gateshead, Sunderland
and Middlesbrough in the North East of England.
The next AV Festival will be held 28 February - 8
March 2008.

The theme of AV Festival 08 is Broadcast.

This October, the BBC begin to switch off
analogue television signals in the UK, paving the
way for television to become entirely digital. At
the same time as this profound change in our
experience of broadcasting takes place, the
internet and mobile networks have created
opportunities for us to 'broadcast ourselves' in
entirely new ways. As the landscape of
broadcasting changes irrevocably, AV Festival 08
will be a catalyst for debate about the future of
broadcasting, and an event to celebrate a century
of on-air and online transmission.

AV Festival 08 will include internationally
renowned artists, filmmakers, researchers and
musicians as well as emerging practitioners. It
will feature:
- New commissions of art, music and moving image
- Open Air: an outdoor programme of events
- Concerts & Performances
- Exhibitions in galleries and museums
- A moving image programme
- FM Radio Stations
- Club events and parties
- An industry debate
- Seminars, conferences and talks
- Workshops

We will be making a full announcement about the
festival theme and some aspects of the programme
mid October.


___AV Festival 08: getting involved

AV Festival 08 is providing creative
practitioners with an opportunity to contribute
ideas to the programme. In the next two months,
we will announce a series of opportunities for
artists, musicians, filmmakers, DJs, VJs,
designers, theorists, technologists, scientists,
philosophers and others to contribute to the
festival.

The first of these opportunities is a call for
proposals for a site-specific audio art
commission at the Sunderland Museum & Winter
Gardens. The fee is GBP5000. If you have an idea
for a new work which responds to our theme and
the context of the Winter Gardens, we would like
to hear about it. See below for more details.

In the coming weeks, we will also call for
proposals from artists and producers who want to
get involved with our radio stations, filmmakers
who want to create a new work for the festival,
and critics and philosophers who want to
contribute to our conferences.


___AV Festival 08: call for proposals

AV Festival will commission new work especially
for the festival, as well as present creative
work which has already been produced.

We are now calling for proposals from artists or
musicians for a new site-specific audio artwork
for the Sunderland Winter Gardens. Experienced
artists are invited to submit original ideas for
a work that responds to both the festival's theme
and the unique environment of the Winter Gardens.

The fee for this commission is GBP 5000.

Artists wishing to submit a proposal must
download the brief for this commission from the
AV Festival website, read the guidelines and send
a proposal by email.

DEADLINE: 15 October 2007
DOWNLOAD BRIEF: http://www.avfestival.co.uk/opportunities/
EMAIL PROPOSALS TO: [log in to unmask]

We will announce further calls for proposals for
other parts of the programme in the coming weeks.
If you want to be kept informed of future
opportunities, please subscribe to our mailing
list by filling up the sign up box on
http://www.avfestival.co.uk


___AV Festival 08: joining our team

Over the coming weeks, we will be inviting
tenders from freelance individuals, or companies,
who want to get involved in the production of AV
Festival 08. We are now inviting tenders for the
first of these contracts: AV Festival Programme
Manager, Middlesbrough.
We are also inviting proposals for several paid
placements for exceptional young people.
There are more details about all these
opportunities at:
http://www.avfestival.co.uk/opportunities


___AV Festival: the story so far

The AV Festival is run by an independent
charitable company called Audio Visual Arts North
East.

AV Festival has run two successful festivals thus far. The first was
held 18 - 22 November 2003 and consisted of over
one hundred events across three towns in two
weeks. It included new a newly commissioned film
by The Light Surgeons which aired on BBC
Television, screenings of Matthew Barney's
Cremaster Cycle, a Mike Figgis film
retrospective, a world premiere by Peter
Greenaway, new work by Richard Fenwick,
performances by the Cinematic Orchestra, DJ Food,
Tina Frank and General Magic, onedotzero
screenings and a lively programme of workshops
and lectures. The archived AV Festival 03 website
can be found at:
http://www.avfest.co.uk/03/new/index2.html

The second AV Festival - LifeLike took place in
over 25 venues from 2-12 March 2006. Over 10
days, AV delivered over 90 events in 3 urban
centres. Curatorially, AV Festival 06
investigated life sciences. It featured
challenging new work by Michael Nyman, Neil
Bromwich & Zoe Walker, D-Fuse, Carsten Nicolai,
and many others. It included 15 ambitious new
commissions from artists, filmmakers and
musicians such as Ryoji Ikeda, Ken Rinaldo, Andy
Gracie and Anthony McCall, Gina
Czarnecki, UMAMi, Time's Up, :zoviet*france:, Suguru Goto and others.
The archived AV Festival 06 website can be found at:
http://www.avfest.co.uk/06/


___AV Festival 08: supporters

AV Festival 08 is organised by Audio Visual Arts
North East, an independent charitable company.

AV Festival 08 forms part of NewcastleGateshead's
world-class festivals and events programme
managed by culture10, based at NewcastleGateshead
Initiative.

AV Festival 08 is supported by Arts Council
England, North East, Newcastle City Council,
Gateshead Council, ONE NorthEast, Middlesbrough
Council, Sunderland City Council, Tyneside
Cinema, Northern Film & Media, UK Film Council.


___AV Festival 08: partnership network

AV Festival has developed close working
relationships with some of the region's key
cultural organisations. Our past or current
partners include:
- University of Teesside, Middlesbrough: http://www.tees.ac.uk
- Tyneside Cinema, Newcastle: http://www.tynecine.org
- Arts Development, Middlesbrough Council
- Arts Development, Sunderland City Council
- The Sage Gateshead, Gateshead : http://www.thesagegateshead.org/
- Forma, Newcastle: http://www.forma.org.uk
- Alt-Gallery, Newcastle: http://www.altgallery.org
- Discovery Museum, Newcastle: www.twmuseums.org.uk/discovery
- Hatton Gallery, Newcastle: http://www.ncl.ac.uk/hatton
- Centre for Life, Newcastle: http://www.life.org.uk
- NO-FI, Newcastle: http://www.no-fi.org.uk
- Isis Arts, Newcastle: http://www.isisarts.org.uk
- Codeworks: http://www.codeworks.net
- CultureLab: http://www.ncl.ac.uk/niassh/culturelab
- Star & Shadow Cinema, Newcastle: http://www.sidecinema.com
- Polytechnic, Newcastle: http://ptechnic.org
- Name, Newcastle: http://www.name-site.com
- Sunderland Museum & Winter Gardens:
- http://www.twmuseums.org.uk/sunderland
- National Glass Centre, Sunderland: http://www.nationalglasscentre.com
- Northern Gallery for Contemporary Art Sunderland: http://www.ngca.co.uk
- Reg Vardy Gallery, Sunderland: http://www.regvardygallery.org/
- CRUMB, Sunderland: http://www.crumbweb.org
- /sLab, Sunderland: http://www.slab.uk.net/
- University of Sunderland: http://www.sunderland.ac.uk
- Washington Arts Centre, Sunderland
- mima, Middlesbrough: http://www.mima.uk.com
- Empire, Middlesbrough: http://www.theempire.co.uk
- Kino Cinema, Middlesbrough: http://www.tenfeettall.co.uk/kino
- Cleveland College of Art & Design, Middlesbrough: http://www.ccad.ac.uk
- UMAMi, Newcastle: http://www.umami.tv
- Dance City, Newcastle: http://www.dancecity.co.uk
- White Hot Communications, Newcastle: http://www.whitehotcomms.co.uk
- Velcrobelly, Newcastle: http://www.velcrobelly.co.uk
- Waygood Gallery, Newcastle: http://www.waygood.org


___AV Festival 08: contacts

For more information contact:

AV Festival
c/o Tyneside Cinema at Gateshead Old Town Hall
West Street
Gateshead
NE8 1HE
UK
Tel: +44 (0)191 2328289, ext 112
Email: [log in to unmask]
http://www.avfestival.co.uk/

AV Festival is run by Audio Visual Arts North
East. A Company Limited by Guarantee. Registered
in England No 06141603. Registered Charity Number
1120368. Registered Office: c/o Tyneside Cinema
at Gateshead Old Town Hall, West Street,
Gateshead, NE8 1HE, UK.