Pangea Festival pitch for Sheffield
@SHEFFIELDTTIMES @MadeinSheffield @sheffieldcityhall3881 @PulpVEVO
This is a presentation to pitch to the world a new imaginary curated festival in the city of Sheffield.
From Sheffield to the world, we are aiming to create something that talks to everyone, that makes us reflect on society and humanity, we want to bring people together, to learn, to think, to self-reflect, and to do all of this with optimism.
We want to transform the city of Sheffield, create a sense of community pride, generate economic growth, accentuate natural and cultural assets, and create a platform to display their values and services. Reinvigorating its urban center. But we want much more than that, we want PANGEA to be a catalyst for change, we want to make it worldwide, to spread the germen of change and we want to bring environmental, social, and cultural benefits. We want Sheffield to be the ambassador of these values, to identify with positive values of progress, and we want all of this to be a long-term global contribution.
PANGEA is a supercontinent, it’s all the earth together, it’s all of us united.
Sheffield is a city with huge potential to host events of this kind.
The city has a large public sector workforce and services. The quality of living is good, and the size is manageable.
The fact that there are two universities, the University of Sheffield, and Sheffield Hallam University, creates a great community of thinkers, it makes the city affordable and interesting. A festival of this kind can be a two-way symbiotic relationship with a city like Sheffield. The student community can bring an edge to the thinking involved in the festival, it can also be an asset to the organization, creation of spaces and workforce, and at the same time, a festival like PANGEA can be an interesting addition to the student’s life.
A quick google search will prove that several major music acts, including Joe Cocker, Ace, Def Leppard, Paul Carrack, Arctic Monkeys, Bring Me the Horizon, Rolo Tomassi, and While She Sleeps, Pulp, and Moloko, hail from the city. The Indie band The Long Blondes originated from the city as part of what the NME dubbed the New Yorkshire scene.
Sheffield has been home to several well-known bands and musicians, with a notably large number of synthpop and other electronic bands originating from the city. These include The Human League, Heaven 17, ABC, Thompson Twins, and the more industrially inclined Cabaret Voltaire and Clock DVA.
The UK is famously proud of its musical contribution to the world, and some cities have specifically made a name out of it (Bristol and trip-hop, London and the Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, The Police, Coldplay or Adele, Camden, and Amy Winehouse, Brixton and Bowie, Liverpool and The Beatles, Manchester, and the dance scene). We want PANGEA to be a loudspeaker for Sheffield, to take advantage of, promote, benefit from, exploit and capitalize on the fact that all these bands and artists come from the city, and they can create identity and pride.
For this first edition of the festival, we have selected a few bands from this list, understanding that it is a theoretical exercise but also creating an interesting mix of these musical contributions that portray well the wide range of musical styles generated in the city.
This line-up would be reinforced by a musical contest, to find new bands that will be the openers of both days of the festival, helping the city to be the place of birth for new international bands.
As the festival wants to bring new visionary ideas for the next generation to do better, the line-up will be enhanced by curated talks that we will explain better each of the stage concepts.
In line with the festival premise, we want to take the crowd and the online viewers into a strange and exciting world of art, music, radical thinkers, innovation, disruption, and idealism.
We will be looking to our Past, as in it we see our failures, our victories, and our defeats. It allows us to see how others coped, and how we survived, it gives us the courage and it protects us. We will move to the present, analyzing the most radical, secretive, influential movements of today, that will be propelling us to the future, we will take an optimistic tour of our future from the present, but we also want to take a philosophical twist into humanity, re-writing our importance as societies on earth and in the universe.
Following this logic and intention, PANGEA will be divided into three stages:
• Winter Garden – END OF THE WORLD stage
• Peace Gardens – THE FUTURE IS NOW stage
• City Hall – PAST IS NEVER DEAD stage
The concepts of past, present, and future will be laced by THE PINK RIBBON, a continuous line representing the link between these stages, sewing them, uniting them, and serving as the light to follow. Pink is the color of friendship, harmony, affection, and this neon light will be an iconic way of moving through stages.