SUPPORT ARTIST LED EVENTS
Show your appreciation and support the team that makes the Lacuna Festival events happen by donating to our GoFundMe campaign.
Your donation will help with the costs of hosting the Lacuna Festivals. These costs vary each year but are always in excess of €1200. Find out more about where your donations go by clicking here.
It's really easy to donate and no amount is too small - just click on the button to the right to make your donation.
Festival Special: All donations over €5 will receive a digital copy of the Lacuna Festivals Metamorphosis 2023 catalogue as a thank you.
Thank you so much for your support - it really does make a difference.
The official language of the Lacuna Festivals is English.
The festivals are international and as such the common working/professional language is English. To make things as easy as possible, we have embedded a Google Translate button at the bottom of each of our pages so that you can read all of the information in 100 different languages!
AIMS
The Lacuna Festivals are an offshoot of The Lacuna Studios – to find out more about the studios please click the picture link to the left.
Through the Lacuna Festivals we hope to;
- Promote quality, contemporary (and sometimes challenging) art to communities isolated from mainland Europe which, therefore have limited access to international, contemporary arts.
- Offer something local/translocal for both resident and visiting artists through stimulating local creatives and the local culture.
- To enlarge creative networks and provide a point of contact for the exchange of knowledge, the sharing of ideas and the blossoming of creativity.
- Develop new ways to exhibit, curate and organise large scale arts events through the use of crowdsourcing for ideas, funding, curation, promotion and all other aspects of such events.
- Support artists at all stages of their careers and from all backgrounds. Equal opportunities for everyone regardless of status, income, gender, race, age, orientation, celebrity or fame.
THE TEAM
Lacuna Festivals are run by a tiny team of two artists from The Lacuna Studios (see pictures to the left for a brief introduction.) Therefore the festivals are run by and for practicing, contemporary artists. The implications of this are massive - there is no profit skimming, business minded, capitalist thinking going on here. We do not see art as an elitist commodity simply to be owned and prized for its value. We see art as essential to our lives and believe that it is essential in everybody's lives - perhaps more than some realise. We are passionate about what we do and we treat your artwork in exactly the same way as we treat our own - with the respect it implicitly deserves.
WHY DO WE DO IT?
This has to be the question we get asked the most. It is not our job, we haven’t been asked to do it and we don’t get paid for it, so we understand why it may be difficult to understand our motivation. But really our motivation is simple and comes from our own experiences.
As artists ourselves we found that there are simply not enough spaces, opportunities, places, people or networks for creatives to do their thing. You know to get together; network both professionally and socially with likeminded people; exhibit their artworks; share their ideas, experiences, knowledge, skills and understanding or even just validate their lifestyle as a creative person.This is particularly true if you live in a remote location, have unsupportive family/friends, don’t have easy access to funding and/or are also working a full time job at the same time.
We run the festivals for you, the artists, because we are just like you. We don’t have enough money, enough time, enough space or enough resources.
What we do have is the drive and determination to find the things that we need to make creative spaces (temporary or permanent) happen. Yes, it is hard work and the week before the festivals we don’t sleep and we mainly survive on coffee and hugs from our friends (this year we couldn't even have hugs!). But the thing is that doing this benefits everyone, you, us and everyone who sees the exhibitions or takes part in the events. So now, running the festivals is one of our favourite things to do.
Let's get our art out there and let it speak for itself to all who encounter it. Let's share our vision of the world, our troubles, our thoughts, our ideas and whatever else we may chose to communicate. But let's share it knowing that it has an intrinsic worth that cannot be defined by a cash sum and knowing that as creatives we are living a valid way of life.