Abstract
One hundred years ago at Schloss Leopoldskron, Max Reinhardt, Richard Strauss and Hugo von Hofmannsthal founded the world-renowned Salzburg Festival as a "Festival of Peace" to transform "the whole town into one stage." To celebrate this centenary so closely linked with its home - Schloss Leopoldskron - Salzburg Global originally scheduled the forward-looking program "What Future for Festivals" for March 2020. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the program had to be postponed to October and has now been moved online due to continuing travel restrictions.
With many festivals facing an uncertain future, the question at the core of this program has become not only more relevant but perhaps even an existential one in many cases. Salzburg Global seeks to support the global festival community during these uncertain times by bringing groundbreaking practitioners and disruptive innovators from around the world together online to catalyze breakthrough ideas, actions, and connections in response to the COVID crisis and against a backdrop of polarization, dehumanization, climate crisis, economic downturn, and techno-colonization.
This 2020 think-tank program of Salzburg Global Seminar's Culture, Arts and Society series will be framed around three interlinked areas of inquiry: - Taking Stock: Responding to Recent Shocks to the System - Medium-Term Strategies for Survival and Adaptation: Coping with Uncertainty - Designs on the Future: Creative Opportunities for Radical Reimagination