During the week of November 2nd, another edition of the Playgrounds Festival took place — and it was a good one.
This edition’s speakers were Golden Wolf, ILM, Framestore, Futuredeluxe, Double Negative, MPC, Aaron Duffy and many more. Even a marathon by the slightly crazy, but certainly brilliant festival veteran Bradley G. Munkowitz. A terrific program which makes the festival one to look out for next year.
An eclectic program of creativity and code
The festival, a week long this year, was given in the southern town of Breda and capital Amsterdam. Both sharing from the same festival program, but each with it’s own distinct features.
On Monday and Tuesday, the School of Fine Art and Design St. Joost was host to multiple workshops. Students and eager enthusiasts could sign up for masterclasses about virtual sculptures, creative coding, battle robots creation and many more. On Tuesday evening, the Playgrounds Award for best student film was awarded. Jelle van Meerendonk with his crazy, absurdistic animation ‘A Morning Without Coffee’ won first price. Unfortunately, it is not online (yet). As soon as it will be, surely it will be posted here.
And of course… the titles
As any well-respected festival, Playgrounds has its title sequence. And as every year it’s a struggle to find something new, something that stands out and is not done yet at the many, many festivals out there.
The festival is unique to the Netherlands, therefore festival director, Leon van Rooij, wanted the Dutch pride to shine. He asked ten Dutch designers and studios to make their part: The Ambassadors, Calango, Renascent, Fons Schiedon, Oddone, Woodwork, Geoffrey Lillemon, Onesize and Media Monks.
The only briefing: ‘Imagine Whatever,’ which was the theme for this year’s edition. Each individual or studio was provided with three names and three weeks to work. Not only did this method create interesting, unexpected results, it also didn’t put the workload onto a single studio or individual. (Any studio or freelance designer who’s made a festival title before knows how much work it can be.)
The result is one happy, random, neatly designed mess — with the only constant being the wonderful sound design done by audio master Roger Lima (White Noise Lab). Enjoy!
