About the festival
Values
Where the Northern Lights get their colours from the release of enormous energy in the encounter between solar wind and gas in the atmosphere, the Northern Lights Festival will also create its energy in the meeting between different perspectives, expressions and people.
Movement
Movement defines our developer role. By taking on extended industry responsibilities, we will seek to facilitate and stimulate long-term artistic collaborations and innovation.
By actively developing new concepts for commissioned works, thematic concert series, curated collaborative concerts and professional competence building and sharing, we want to contribute to strengthening momentum and development in the Northern Norwegian music field.
Collaboration
Collaboration is key to redeeming our potential and defines our role at the intersection of art, society and science.
We will always seek cooperation with regional cultural actors, listen to advice and input from the field and work closely with business and tourism in the North. Through cooperation, we will create new spaces for interdisciplinary dialogue.
Cooperation will also strengthen our relations with relevant music communities in the East, and point the way towards long-term international relations in the Arctic
Glocal
Being glocal is about defining the global into a local context. As part of the global community, we are also dependent on rethinking sustainability, ecologically, aesthetically and socially, and defining what the tendencies and consequences of globalisation mean for us locally.
Being glocal describes a quest to see oneself in a larger context, building international relationships and linking these to local forces.
The Northern Lights are beautiful and magical, and today an impetus to bring the world to Tromsø through visitors from all over the globe. At the same time, the Northern Lights are an invariable manifestation of the Northern.
This is how the Northern Lights also reflect the core and justification of the festival: a northern identity and reality - in the face of artistic expressions from a whole world.
Our purpose
The Northern Lights Festival is a winter festival of art music and performing arts that annually takes place in Tromsø. We are going to:
- Develop the northern arts and music field through talent development, proactive commissioning projects and innovative artistic collaborations.
- Challenge both the audience's expectations and the formats and frameworks of art music through the presentation of large stage productions, from home and abroad.
- Exploring the interaction and involvement of children and young people, local amateur environments and new venues, inside and outside the urban space.
- Examining the breaking point between culture, research and social life through a broad dialogue, debate and academic programme