Rewire is an annual international festival that focuses on innovative music and sound art. The festival presents a broad programme with a focus on the artistic vanguard in contemporary electronic music, new jazz, experimental pop, sound art and modern composed music. The festival also stimulates crossovers with other art disciplines. (Re)Setting is the overarching theme of Rewire 2021. This theme explores the way society, sound and technology relate to a constantly changing and evolving world. Climate change, new technological developments, new scientific discoveries and political shifts, but also everyday changes on an individual scale. (Re)Setting would have been the central theme during the cancelled edition of Rewire 2020. The theme has only gained in importance since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. For this reason, it was decided to explore the theme further and make new connections with the 'new' world we live in today. The festival programme includes concerts/interdisciplinary performances, (educational) workshops, sound walks, film screenings, (sound) installations, site-specific compositions throughout the city and a music hackspace. The discourse programme includes a collection of essays with in-depth texts by leading international critics, followed by panel discussions with the relevant makers and the artist talks. The organization works together with various national and international cultural, media and educational partners, such as the Royal Conservatoire, Studio Loos, iii, West, Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision, The Grey Space In The Middle, Korzo, Manchester International Festival (UK), Music Hackspace, and many others. The tenth edition of Rewire festival will take place from Thursday 8 to Sunday 11 April 2021 at over 20 locations in The Hague and also online for a global audience.

Kaboom Animation Festival aims to position animation as a medium that plays an essential and interpretive role in the changing and growing media landscape. Kaboom Animation Festival is the result of the merger between the KLIK Amsterdam Animation Festival and the Holland Animation Film Festival. The first joint edition took place in November 2019. In March 2021, the second edition of the renewed, innovative festival will take place. The theme of the 2021 festival edition is Big Bang! Inspired by the idea of the Big Bang, Kaboom is showing film programmes that ask questions about the beginning of the universe and life on earth. The festival is also going back to the 'big bang' of animation with the screening of milestones in the history of animation, such as the first animation in colour and the first animation with sound. Kaboom Animation Festival specifically requests a contribution for the Expanded Animation Expo, with which the festival explores the boundaries of the animation medium and searches for crossovers with other disciplines and experiments. The programme includes a VR competition, an AR exhibition, games, panels and discussions on cross-media projects and master classes about the future of the medium. The intended result is to welcome more than 12,000 paying visitors to the festival. Depending on possible restrictions, the festival will take place digitally or in physical form in Cultuurpark Westergas in Amsterdam in March.
Amsterdam, 31 March - 4 April 2021 (and Utrecht, 27 - 30 March)

POW! WOW! is the world's largest and most famous street-art festival. Originally started on the edges of Hawaii, where drab suburbs transformed into a beloved open art gallery. After a number of successful editions on the island, POW! WOW! expanded worldwide to locations such as Los Angeles, Hong Kong and Japan. In 2018, the very first European edition took place, with Rotterdam as host city. POW! WOW! Rotterdam is organized by Stichting Hiphop In Je Smoel (HIJS) and its own initiative Rewriters010. In September 2021, the fourth edition of the festival will take place in Rotterdam South. For 10 days, various local, national and international street-art artists will work on their new work in the local neighbourhood, with the finale on the day of the festival (Sunday 12 September 2021). POW! WOW! Rotterdam introduces a broad and diverse audience to the art form and its innovations. The surprising element that street art enjoys, and the free associations it evokes (other than in the closed context of a museum), constantly produces new forms of interaction with the public and their perception of public space through art.
Rotterdam, 5 - 12 September 2021

SPREAD Zinefest is a biennial festival in Groningen dedicated to 'self-published art': books, zines and prints, and the corresponding DIY scene. For 10 days, the festival will bring attention to self-published art and the making, distribution and exhibition of books, zines and prints by means of a zine market, zine library, workshops, lectures and various events. SPREAD aims to stimulate research into content, form and distribution and therefore allows national and international makers to come together in a setting where connection, experimentation, inspiration and new works can be created. Most of this takes place in the Zine Displayer, an installation designed by Théo Demans, based on the 'conference idea'. SPREAD aims to showcase the variety of possibilities for making zines by means of examples that are visual, narrative or textually inquisitive. This includes projects from areas or communities in which restriction, censorship or repression of the possibilities to express yourself play a role. The organization of SPREAD is a collaboration between Sign, an interdisciplinary national podium for contemporary, experimental art, and het resort, an experimental site-specific art initiative. Illustrator Floor van Meeuwen is co-organizer and there are curators involved for the international connections. With this third edition, the festival aims to attract 1200 visitors.
Groningen, 17-26 September 2021