Preparation and Site Selection
Variations in preparatory timelines for different art festivals
Defining a general preparation timeline for an art festival is not easy, as some are annual while others are biennial or triennial and each event varies in terms of content and genre.
While most of the annual festivals adopt a contest format, those that include exhibitions with a specific theme generally seem to require two or more years of preparation.
Three-year preparations for サイアフ
Here is a rough outline of the activities leading up to the opening of サイアフ.
The following year after the festival is held, the number of staff in the Secretariat is generally reduced to less than half. This minimal number of staff will finalize the policy for the next festival and the related director selection policy. Additionally, PR and campaign programs need to be examined within the limited budget of the first year, which will be extremely small.
Once a director is finally selected towards the end, site visits and meetings with the Secretariat proceed rapidly. By this time, the broadly selected venues are proposed by the Secretariat to the director, as will be discussed later.
The second year begins to see the expansion of staff with more municipal employees, laying the groundwork for the festival to run. Upon finalizing the theme of サイアフ, the venue coordination will begin in earnest.
Adjustments may be necessary depending on the content of press releases released several times before the opening. Pre-events are also held as participating artists gradually begin their preliminary tours of Sapporo.
In the opening year, when the number of Secretariat members including external staff increases and the workload becomes heavier, the respective roles of planning exhibition production, public relations and operations on-site, and general administration accounting begin to progress simultaneously.
This makes it difficult to efficiently share information, but having experienced various trial and error processes, the team is actively engaged in organizing the event while searching for ways to communicate effectively.
Venues selected several years in advance
The サイアフ Secretariat is permanently located within Sapporo City Hall, but here is no fixed venue for the festival with the exception of a section of the Shiryokan Former Sapporo Court of Appeals which has served as a base for activities since 2015. This means that we need to first determine available venues.
As the Sapporo Art Museum and the Hokkaido Museum of Modern Art, the main venues for サイアフ, may be booked several years in advance for exhibition preparation, making a start even three years in advance is not too early.
Management entity of each venue
The museum facilities noted above are operated by different organizations.
The Hokkaido Museum of Modern Art is operated by the Hokkaido Board of Education, and the Sapporo Art Museum and Sapporo Cultural Arts Community Center SCARTS are operated by the Sapporo Cultural Arts Foundation, whereas Moerenuma Park is operated by the Sapporo Parks and Greenery Association. Despite having different conditions of use and rules per organization, the sense of unity among the venues of サイアフ2024, bound together by the grand stories of the event page 79 , is truly the fruit of labor of meticulous coordination.
Other situations are constantly changing on a case-by-case basis, such as the coordination of the Future Theater, the Underground Park, and the private facilities utilized during サイアフ2017. In the case of private facilities and vacant properties, it is often challenging to book several years in advance in many cases, waiting for the right time is the only practical solution.
The difficulty in selecting venues arises from the fact that other venues cannot be booked at the same point in time as the museum, which requires a very early booking.
The decision to use the Future Theater was also challenging.
Besides the venues that the Secretariat had in mind, the director requested an additional venue located in the central area of the city with the capability to exhibit an acceptable number of artworks. The theater that met these conditions had miraculously become available.
Adding one more venue, however, involves budget adjustments. Because the overall budget will not necessarily increase with the addition of a large venue like the Future Theater, it is necessary to make crucial decisions regarding rearranging other parts of the budget.
It is truly a gamble. As long as the event is organized by the City of Sapporo, priority is given to facilities managed by the city. However, we have continued to consider appropriate venues on a case-by-case basis as needed.
It is a history of trial and error, so to speak.
Division of planning roles
Until サイアフ2017, the サイアフ Secretariat assigned project planners to all the venues.
However, it was the policy of サイアフ2020 that venues operated by external organizations appoint project planners responsible for the event while collaborating with サイアフ as an official venue. It all started when the director of サイアフ2020, AMANO Taro, who led curatorial career at the Hokkaido Museum of Modern Art, planned the event from the beginning with local talent acquisition in mind.
For this reason, two types of venues were prepared for サイアフ2024 One directly operated by the Secretariat, and the other managed and operated by an external organization. The latter venues were requested to proceed with their own plans based on the budget, implementation conditions, and requests presented by the Secretariat.
While this initiative brought out the individuality of each venue, which was a positive outcome, the sense of unity as a whole festival, sharing of information, and clarification of responsibilities remain as issues for future editions.
The Secretariat will need to remain flexible to change with a view to the future of サイアフ and the development of Sapporo’s arts and culture.