Join our international guest artists and local community leaders for three exciting panels that discuss the festival’s themes from the perspective of literature, local traditions and history, and social change. The Access Through the Arts forums are a meeting place between our guest artists, local leaders, and you, the audience.
The three panels will take place on three different days and are by donation to attend.
All conversations will be live streamed through Howlround.
1. The Animacy of the More-Than-Human World
Friday, 4:30 PM
This panel explores materiality, ecology, and the metaphors of illumination through the work of artists who invite audiences to reconsider the boundaries between human and nonhuman worlds. Through light, shadow, and the transformation of objects and environments, the conversation examines how performance can reveal the animacy of matter and the shared breath between humans, animals, and objects.
Panelists reflect on ways cultural belief systems, rituals, and artistic practices imbue objects and landscapes with life, and what becomes possible when humans make space for the agency of the more-than-human world rather than imposing their own. With a focus on care, stewardship, and deep attention, the discussion considers how histories—human and beyond—are embedded in the environments around us, from rivers to forests, and how performance can help us perceive and honor these connections.
2. Talking About Endings
Saturday, 12:30 PM
Artists and thinkers gather to explore what it means to live in a time shaped by ecological crisis, technological change, and cultural disconnection from processes of death and ending. This conversation asks how we might approach endings with responsibility, care, and reflection in a world saturated with information but often lacking space for grief.
Panelists consider the challenges of speaking about death, loss, and climate change—especially with younger generations—and reflect on how we hold, process, and release grief both individually and collectively. The discussion opens space for reimagining cultural relationships to endings, inviting more honest, compassionate, and generative ways of acknowledging transition, impermanence, and letting go.
3. New Beginnings: Puppetry as Resistance and Reflection
Sunday, 12:30 PM
This panel highlights puppetry’s enduring role as a tool of resistance and a mirror to systems of power. Bringing together artists working across traditional and contemporary forms, the conversation explores how satire, exaggeration, metaphor, and magical realism can challenge political, social, and cultural authority.
Moving between reverence and irreverence, panelists examine how puppetry creates space for dissent, critique, and reimagination. The discussion also considers the generative tension between endings and beginnings—how moments of rupture, revolution, and rebuilding demand creative vision. In these spaces of uncertainty, puppetry and performance offer powerful means to imagine and articulate new possibilities for collective futures.