Expanding Horizons - Breaking down festival boundaries (360G-Wellcome-086996_Z_08_Z)

Festivals are intense periods of activity constrained it both time and space. They are highly versatile and can be tuned to meet the needs and interests of different audiences. Their programmes can include a great variety of content and deploy a range of presentational styles. As an organisation, Cheltenham Festivals, is unique in the UK in running 4 Festivals at different times of the year (Jazz, Science, Music, Literature). All have the same values and their programmes include events of a highly intellectual nature alongside others designed purely to entertain. These events can be lectures, debates, discussions, games, cabaret evenings, provocation papers to give just some examples. They can be designed for audiences as small as 20 or as large as 2000 The people taking part may be the most learned and respected scientists, authors or musicians in the world or they may be young talented performers, the experts of tomorrow who bring fresh inspiration to our events. Because of the great range of topics and types of event, our Festivals have the ability to bring together an extraordinarily diverse congregation both in terms of the performers and audiences. So, for the length of the Festival, Cheltenham becomes, very easily and naturally, a crucible of creativity. Performers featured in Festivals for the first time, invariably comment on the "buzz", the energy and opportunities for interaction, both with their peers and with members of the audience. It is this creative energy, the very essence of the Festivals that we want to harness and develop through this bid. Our vision is that Cheltenham Festivals can make a great contribution to engaging different audiences with bio-medical science. We know we can achieve more if we have the resources that will enable us to devise and deliver more original, high impact events that can be used, not just by us, but also made available to the rich Festival network in the UK and beyond. So, we want to use our expertise, our networks and partnerships to commission and create original events for the Festivals in the field of bio-medical science. The initial focus will be on joint programming across the Science and Literature Festivals that explores emerging bio-medical research as well as broad topical themes in both disciplines. With the help of partners, we then intend to share the events with as many people as possible via touring to other cultural destinations, better use of the web, broadcast and training of others to deliver events of the kind we have devised.