“If the participants of the festival maintain horizontal relationships and if each of them gives something of their own, would the festival be more beautiful and enjoyable?”

For Chuncheon Arts Festival, producers, stage staff and artists joined forces to make a festival that would be different from the existing ones. Before the festival, they had already worked together on the outdoor stage of Chuncheon Children’s Center several times. People from different backgrounds began to collaborate in horizontal relationships to donate their talent.

Chuncheon Arts Festival started as a donation-based festival. The festival’s essential participants (i.e. producers, performers and staff) donated what they had in different ways.

From producers to the audience, all participants dream of becoming the main players of the festival through their participation in different forms. Such a dream is also the festival’s raison d’être.

As the festival encourages people to participate more actively, their satisfaction is greater than that of any other festival. Not only the production staff but also most of the performers wish to keep participating in the festival once they perform for it.

The spirit of Chuncheon Arts Festival is summarized as

“십시일반(Ten spoons of rice fills a bowl - Korean proverb)”

Indeed, its stage staff and system providers offer a “spoon” of the best technology and equipment. Its producers come with another “spoon” of performance planning. Promotion experts add another “spoon” of promotion and marketing. Finally, performing arts companies give us another “spoon” of performances to fill the stage prepared for them.  

From 2002 (when the festival started as the Chuncheon Dance Festival) to 2011, the Chuncheon Arts Festival took place annually on the outdoor stage of Chuncheon Children’s Center (today’s KT&G Sangsang Madang in Chuncheon). The stage was designed by the late architect Kim Su-geun. It has been known as a beautiful stage that fascinates visitors with its harmony of the building, lake and mountain.

Later on, the festival was organized in Chuncheon City’s major venues including the Festival Theater Momzit, every August. In the past, the participants donated their talent. But today, the festival provides its performers and staff with fair remuneration, while maintaining its conviction that “ten spoons of rice fills a bowl.”

Celebrating its 20^th anniversary in 2021, the festival expanded its finance and size in order to grow into one of Korea’s representative arts festivals.

It is a festival where performers and the audience meet as they bring their own spoons of rice. It is a festival where everyone becomes an owner and shares something.

Such a dream of the festival has brought together more and more people.

In the middle of hot summer in Chuncheon City,

Chuncheon Arts Festival is waiting for you.