Both AADK Spain and TFA believe immersive experiences can bring people together in long-lasting ways. Yet, these need a guided structure, attentive mediation and care. The Sharing Places Lab seeked to explore new ways of togetherness and presence, bringing back the value of artistic and curatorial exchanges, and allowing space for spending casual time with each other and giving time for human relationships grow in an meaningful way. In this way, the Lab as a format for more in-depth encounters between artists and cultural workers, aims to catalyse new ideas and to develop projects among TFA Alumni and beyond. 

The Festival Labs are conceived as upskilling opportunities for Alumni of The Festival Academy's previous programs. This is not only a way to serve the community that TFA has built up over the last 17 years, but also ensures that participants are already familiar with TFA’s methodologies and ethos, and thereby facilitating a more productive lab environment. 

Bringing together a harmonious yet effervescent constellation of people also plays a key role in the design of immersive experiences.  

The challenge of the process was to put together a group that would allow everyone to benefit and contribute best with their unique abilities and perspectives to build a fruitful conversation and impactful collaborative experience. The team of The Festival Academy has an in-depth knowledge of the profiles of their Alumni community which helped identifying suitable people. 

TFA reached out to possible participants individually, coordinated by Inge Ceustermans and the TFA team, following an in-depth examination of certain criteria. Possible participants were contacted directly and were briefed in individual online calls about the overarching project and how participants invisioned to contribute to the Lab.

As the focus of the Lab was to explore artistic collaborations among the Mediterranean and SWANA region, all participants had to come from these focus regions and had to have a profile that combined curator-artist points of view. TFA conducted in depth conversation with each of the candidates beforehand to align on expectations and ideas.