Freedom Festival Arts Trust

Who we are

Freedom Festival Arts Trust is an award-winning, pioneering and ambitious arts organisation, anchored in the city of Hull and influential in the national and international arts sector. We believe that the arts are central to the well-being of our society and are driven by a pursuit of excellence, championing the creative process, and presenting mainly in public space free-to-access extraordinary artistic programmes rooted in the exploration of human rights, democracy and freedom.

Freedom Festival Arts Trust is the Charitable Trust producing the annual award-winning Freedom Festival, The Awakening (2022 and 2023) an annual programme of artistic development work, participatory projects and commissioning programmes based in the City of Hull.

Freedom Festival Arts Trust are a creative producing house and event company inspired by the reformist legacy of William Wilberforce, the wider abolitionist movement and this relationship to the identity of the city of Hull. We do this by building local, national and international alliances to create cultural experiences that have something to say about universal values and a fair society that we want to create together.

We believe festivals and creative events can be more than just an annual celebratory moment for a city to connect, to be inspired, to come together as a community and to benefit a city’s tourist and visitor strategies, but also as an arena to encourage and celebrate positive change, internationalism, democracy and equitable cohesion in society. We believe artists are extremely well-placed and skilled at challenging divisive and negative narratives increasingly prevalent in modern day society.

Our artistic programme is multi-disciplinary and collaborative across regional, national and international arts sectors. We also collaborate with academic partners, human rights organisations, activists, educationalists, scientists, designers, engineers, conservationists, environmentalists and most importantly the general public.

Recently as an example of an extraordinary participatory and social project we undertook in addition to the festivals above we presented the Hull Vigil from May 2021 to May 2022.

For an entire year at sunrise and sunset, a citizen of Hull stood atop a bespoke designed shelter on one of the highest buildings and watched over the city, creating a human chain over one year of ‘watchers’ – this project also produced an online blog, book, a film and an exhibition later this year.

Please do take the time to explore our website for more information about all that we do.

We are an Arts Council National Portfolio Organisation and receive annual investment from Hull City Council. Other income is sourced from sponsorship, trusts and foundations, EU culture funds, , subsidies into program from national touring networks, international embassies and partners, and a modest income from commercial activity during the festival.

We operate within several creative development, touring and commissioning networks including InSitu and Global Streets, and with local and regional cultural, civic and academic organisations.

Since 2013 we have supported over 11,000 local people as participants in year-round projects, commissioned or presented 105 new works, supported in excess of 450 artists to enhance their practice and have contributed over £25m to the local economy. We work with approximately 150 freelancers and volunteers each festival and employ up to 5 interns per year in partnership with the University of Hull, offering invaluable cultural sector experience.

We are in the process of diversifying our income streams to continue growing our resilience and sustainability.