AV Festival is a leading international Festival of contemporary art, music and film. A biennial event, the Festival is thematically curated to engage audiences with current ideas across art, society and technology.

The Festival commissions new work, and curates thematic strands of internationally significant existing work. Each Festival consists of around 20 exhibitions and 60 special events including concerts, film screenings and talks, simultaneously across Newcastle, Gateshead, Sunderland and Middlesbrough.

Past editions of the Festival have taken place biennially since 2006, with a pilot edition in 2003. Since then it has developed to become a significant international event, achieving both public and critical acclaim. The evolution of what was previously a ten-day Festival to a month long edition in 2012, aims to create greater engagement.

The Festival is built on collaboration and partnership working and has a strong network of supporters across the North East, and around the world. Our partners include major regional venues including mima Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art, The Sage Gateshead, Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art, Tyneside Cinema and Tyne & Wear Archives & Museums. 

The last edition of the Festival was delivered in 2010. Over ten-days it achieved a 65% increase in audience attendance to 70,000 visits, including a 135% increase in visitors from outside the North East. It worked in partnership with 31 cultural venues, engaged 140 artists, 164 volunteers, commissioned 20 new works and created £1.25 of economic output per pound invested. In 2009 and 2012 AV Festival won a Silver Award at the North East Tourism Awards.

AV Festival has previously commissioned and worked with leading artists including: Kenneth Anger, artificiel, Autechre, Craig Baldwin, Vicki Bennett, Sonia Boyce, Oron Catts, Marcus Coates, Cluster, Gina Czarnecki, Rhodri Davies, Graham Dolphin, Evelina Domnitch & Dmitry Gelfand, FM Einheit, Graham Harwood, Felix Hess, Joyce Hinterding, Harun Farocki, Richard Fenwick, Alec Finlay, Iain Forsyth & Jane Pollard, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Suguru Goto, Andy Gracie, Ryoji Ikeda, Atsuhiro Ito, Zilvinas Kempinas, Felix Kubin, Steve Kurtz, Pe Lang, Liliane Lijn, Anthony McCall, Kaffe Matthews, Gustav Metzger, Yuko Mohri, Alan Moore, Carsten Nicolai, Michael Nyman, Stephen O'Malley, Charlemagne Palestine, Lee Patterson, Marko Peljhan, Jean-Jacques Perry, Rick Prelinger, Ken Rinaldo, Kate Rich, Aura Satz, Semiconductor, Iain Sinclair, Simon Fisher Turner, Staalplaat Soundsystem, Susan Stenger, Chris Watson, Jana Winderen, and :zoviet*france: