ASEAN-UK Festival Management Training - Open Call

We are looking for up to 60 festival managers and programmers from the ASEAN region who:

• are from ASEAN member states: Brunei Darussalam, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Singapore, Thailand, The Philippines, Viet Nam and Timor Leste.
• applicants who can demonstrate active festival/or arts experience in a middle to senior level role, and have at least 3-5 years experience of working within the festivals sector
• festival directors, organisers, founders, entrepreneurs, producers, curators, cultural managers and policymakers involved in festival and event development across ASEAN region. Festivals can be single artform, cross-artform, or multidisciplinary.
• Applicants can come from a range of artistic and curatorial leadership to organisational management, business development, marketing, fundraising, HR and policy development in the festival sector
• Participants must join all four sessions to receive the certificate of course completion. Non- attendance of 2 or more sessions will lead to non-completion of the training.
• The training will be delivered in English. Participants are expected to have a proficient level of English to take part in the training.

Note: For festival typology to refer to ASEAN Festival Mapping report – eg focus is on arts and cultural festivals, not traditional/ religious festivals

To apply, please carefully read this Open Call briefing document in its entirety and complete an Application via Microsoft Forms: http://bit.ly/festivalmgmt2025 by 4 June 2025, 23:59 GMT.

Please note that you may need to create a Microsoft account in order to start and complete the application process. Applications must be in English.

Key dates:

Access support for writing your application

If you identify as disabled, you are welcome to contact us ace2@britishcouncil.org for possible support we may offer to assist with making your application. 

If you would like information contained in this invitation letter or Expression of Interest form in any other format, please contact the British Council team by email ace2@britishcouncil.org 

An important aspect of this programme's vision is to substantially contribute to strengthen further cultural exchange and foster deeper collaboration between the UK and ASEAN Member States, while also working to improve the quality and variety of festivals in the ASEAN region. All ASEAN Member States will be eligible to participate in the programme.

For more information visit https://britishcouncil.org/ https://www.gov.uk/world/uk-mission-to-asean https://asean.org/

https://www.napier.ac.uk/about-us

Facilitators

Professor Jane Ali-Knight is Professor in Festival and Event Management at ENU. She is currently leading and developing the festival and event subject group as well as lecturing at Universities internationally and facilitating training and development in the field. Her core activities fall into three main areas: event and festival related programmes; research and publications; and conferences and

professional events. She is a board member/trustee of BAFA (British Arts and Festivals Association); and Chair of Hidden Door Festival and is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and Royal Society of the Arts.

Jane has extensive experience in designing and delivering undergraduate, postgraduate and professional courses in tourism and festival and event management. She currently leads the award- winning Destination Leaders Programme delivered in conjunction with Scottish Enterprise. Jane is also an experienced practitioner working on and delivering festivals and events, both in the UK and overseas. Her festival related experience includes Special Event Management and Publicity Co-ordination for the Abu Dhabi Film Festival (ADFF), 2007-2012; CakeFest Edinburgh (2015-16). She has also been a judge on the Scottish Thistle Awards; e Awards in Scotland and the Middle East Event Awards and was a member of the Gulf Steering Group for the Scottish Government.

Professor Gary Kerr is a Visiting Professor at Edinburgh Napier University. He is currently Professor and Head of Department of Marketing, Tourism and Sport at Atlantic Technological University. Until January 2025, Gary was Professor at ENU where he was Programme Leader for the South Asia Festival Academies. He has also delivered Festival Academies in the UAE and Oman. He leads an award- winning team who are researching how festivals, events and arts/cultural venues can become more accessible for people living with dementia. Gary is a festivals practitioner. He is currently Curator at Cheltenham Science Festival.

Until recently, Gary was Chair at Sonic Bothy – an organisation that provides opportunities for people with additional learning needs to perform at festivals. Gary is Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy; Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts; and Fellow of Enterprise Educators UK. Gary is Co-Chair of the Young Academy of Scotland; Member of the Global Young Academy; Former Member of the Scotland Advisory Committee at the British Council; and Advisory Board Member at the Scottish Graduate School for Arts and Humanities.

Starting from the diversity of creative process of the festivals in Yogyakarta, Jogja Festivals existed as a strategic pot that focused on strengthening the festival ecosystem, developing the potentialities of each ally, synergizing between allies and/or the festivals to the stakeholders-and the other way around, as well as becoming a center of information and promotion - so the complexity would be well accessible to the wider communities around Yogyakarta and other cities.

As the one and only strategic pot that focuses on festival's ecosystem in Indonesia, Jogja Festivals always attempts to learn and open up various possibilities for collaboration and sharing knowledge in order to make Yogyakarta included in a festival's city in the world. 

https://www.jogjafestivals.com/about-us