Lacuna Festivals

The Lacuna Festivals are an annual International Contemporary Art Festival delivered in the Canary Islands, Spain. Over the last three years our festival has grown in popularity and now runs for a whole month during the summer.

In 2020 the festivals exhibited 653 artworks, from 210 artists, coming from 53 countries around the world and held 45 live events. There was no fee for artists to partake or exhibit and all of our exhibitions and events were completely free to view or participate in, encouraging the public to engage in Contemporary Art from around the world. We aim to continue to grow our reach around the world and continue to bring international artists together.

The Lacuna Festivals aim to:
Promote quality, contemporary (and sometimes challenging) art to communities isolated from mainland Europe which, therefore have limited access to Arts & Culture.
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.

ABOUT THE TEAM
Lacuna Festivals are run by a tiny team of two artists from The Lacuna Studios. 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 realize. 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 RUN THE FESTIVALS?
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.

Our long term goal is to be able to provide ‘The Lacuna Studios’; residential studio spaces in the Canary Islands, created by and for artists, makers, designers, craftspeople, thinkers, writers, musicians, educators and students from around the world. We have a number of goals which are set out below.

The Lacuna Studios aim to:
Provide a physical space for Creatives to visit, relax, create and meet other like minded people.
Foster the conditions needed for Creatives to embrace the mental space necessary to create.
Develop a creative hub for the local community.
Engage the local community in arts and culture from around the world.
Improve arts and cultural provision within the local area.
Form part of a network of like minded places and people, enabling Creatives to connect around the world.

Until we have accomplished our longer term goal of setting up a permanent residential studio space in the Canary Islands, we are working on our shorter term goals. Our main goal is to invigorate the grass roots, international, contemporary art scene here in the Canary Islands in any way that we can  – one of our biggest contributions is the Lacuna Festivals