ARTISTIC

Artistic responsibility is about creating change and development in the cultural life while pushing for a more equal access to performing and experiencing art.

Art can shed light on perspectives that we might not see otherwise. We have a role in strengthening the position of art in society, and we actively support emerging artists and make the festival available for new artistic encounters, formats, and experiments.

Read here about our focus areas that aim to contribute to sustainable development within the arts.

Platform for young artists

We use the festival as a platform to create attention around young artists who have not yet received the deserved exposure. Our focus on emerging artists is based on a belief that it is the innovative artists and debaters of tomorrow who carry the most socially relevant agendas forward.

Established artists such as Artigeardit, Blæst, Jada, Mø, Tessa, and The Minds of 99 met their first large audience at Roskilde Festival's smallest stages before they had their breakthrough and subsequently conquered larger stages.

With the inauguration of two new stages in 2023, Eos and Gaia, we will create even better conditions for young musicians.

Our programme for art and activism also supports emerging artists.  In 2023, artists at the beginning of their careers such as Alex/Alexandra Jönsson, Maria Nørholm Ramouk, Regitze Engelsborg Carlsen, Sóley Ragnasdóttir, Tore Hallas og Trine Struwe create new works and installations through our partnership with Art Hub Copenhagen.

Organizations such as Social Justice Inluencers, Turning Tables, Rapolitics og The Green Youth Movement create attention around young voices in culture, and in partnership with the design collective Public Works, we have held summer schools on sustainability and activism in urban development.

Donations to emerging artists

Through donations to upcoming artists and activists, we can support ideas and initiatives that can sprout and push art and society in new directions. In this way, the economic proceeds from the festival create a breeding ground for new ideas.

In 2022-2023, we have donated more than three million DDK to emerging artists and activists who have chosen to actively engage in some of the major social issues of our time.

See donation policy

Roskilde Festival as an Urban Laboratory

Every year, we build a city anew – complete with infrastructure, architecture and urban spaces, commercial life, communities, art and culture. During the eight days a year when the festival city physically exists, it becomes Denmark's fourth largest city in terms of population.

The size and tempory nature of the festival city make it a gigantic living urban laboratory. A festival city that reinvents itself and enables experimentation and testing of new ideas. In this way, we learn about how we interact culturally and socially.

At the same time, we experience how art and culture can transform our participants and inspire new communities and new ways of being together.

Learn more about Roskilde Festival as an Urban Laboratory

Artistic innovation

We see artists as collaborators and strive to develop works and installations in close collaboration with them. At the same time, we design the festival site to support new artistic experiences.

This turns the festival city into a creative playground and a space for development where new ideas arise and are realized. Spaces like Platform and Destroy Me Once, Destroy Me Twice are some of the projects that play with content, scenography, and interaction between art and participants.

The several kilometers of graffiti works on the facades and fences of the festival city are created on-site by a community of over 100 artists from all over the world, and Claudia Comte's six-meter-tall tree trunk installation ME WE was created for the festival in collaboration with Copenhagen Contemporary and has since been installed in the recreational landscape Milen south of Roskilde.

We create other projects through partnerships with other cultural institutions, where experiences, knowledge, and ideas across boundaries create new types of experiences.

Together with Betty Nansen Theater, we have developed the concert format called Iscenesat, where artists such as Konvent, When Saints Go Machine, Bisse, and Iris Gold have brought music and theater together in new experimental meetings.

Increased diversity in programming

Roskilde Festival's music and art program should reflect diversity in artistic expressions, gender representation, ethnicity, and nationality.

Diversity is important to increase inter-human understanding in our society, and art can be a tool for creating change and showing new perspectives.

We work with diversity within three overarching areas: support for emerging artists, highlighting role models, and sharing knowhow and dialogue.

Read about diversity in program planning (in Danish only)

Responsible curation

Artists are co-creators of the festival and are instrumental in giving the guests great experiences, not only on the music stages but also through all the performances, works, and installations that contribute to the overall experience.

Art costs money, and artists should earn income from their work and creations, regardless of where they are in the industry's supply chain.

Therefore, artists participate on fair terms. This means that artists are compensated according to the agreed-upon industry standard rates or in consultation with the professional organizations within their fields. At the same time, we offer proper facilities, technical conditions, and catering at the festival.

Through co-productions with museums, art galleries, theaters, and venues, we can offer artists a broader and larger audience than what is possible during the eight-day festival each year. Additionally, co-productions allow for longer working periods and thus further immersion and development in the artistic process.

Volunteering and education

Art is not created solely on stages. Artists are surrounded by project managers, curators, and technicians who coordinate and create the supporting sound and lighting experiences.

Volunteering can provide practical experience with larger projects and also leadership tools that can be used as a basis to establish or develop professionally in the cultural industry.

Some volunteers are engaged as scouts who scout the music scene as part of the booking work.

Others participate in an educational program in sound production, which we have developed in collaboration with the American loudspeaker manufacturer Meyer Sound. Here, approximately 30 freelance sound technicians participate in an educational program focusing on conflict management, co-creation, social relations, speaker design, and sound measurement.

Through the training, the participants can strengthen their networks, share experiences, and access to testing their skills at a high level at the festival.

At the same time, the program can renew the industry through more broadly-based skills and focus on employees' rights and also contribute to influencing diversity and gender balance in a often quite male-dominated world.