ANTYfest

Advertising ants COVID19 design festival lockdown music UMN Ural music night Voskhod

In summer 2020, due to self-isolation, quarantine and an unfavorable epidemiological situation in the world, many music festivals were canceled or postponed indefinitely.

To support the global festival movement, the organizers of the Russian festival Ural Music Night, for the first time in history, united 10 music festivals to surprise the whole world and attract attention to the industry that had suffered a lot from the pandemic.

10 international festivals joined the initiative: Blue Bird (Austria), Busan Rock Festival (South Korea), International Music Showcase Festival (Israel), Lagos International Jazz Festival (Nigeria), Le guess who? (Netherlands), Pohoda Festival (Slovakia), Stereoleto (Russia), Summer Sound festival (Latvia), Terminal music & arts festival (Serbia), V-ROX (Russia).

The most unexpected music project of this year took place on August 30 on the website ANTYFEST.RU. You might ask — how was it even possible to have a festival at that time?

The idea of ANTYfest was to recreate the spirit of a crowd, an irreplaceable element of any festival, with something that doesn't have to follow the rules of the lockdown.

11 mini-sets — replicas of music equipment, real-life stages and their surroundings, used at the 11 festivals, participants of the project — were hand-made to invite and entertain a very special audience — 8 000 ants. Actual ants.

The macro-shooting took place in the wild, in the forest near 4 ant nests. The result is available on the website; music fans can enjoy 11 "recap" videos from the festivals (how it would have been if it wasn't for the pandemic).

Project team: Voskhod agency, SNYATO NAMI production studio

While the music industry is still on hold, the festivals are looking forward to staying in touch with their fans. The website offers a few ways to do that. It is a kind of an “ant-nest” where you can “travel” around the map of festivals, learn about them, buy their merch and donate money to them. Or just simply entertain yourself watching the 11 recap videos with partying ants, remembering the good old days and making plans for future trips.

Apart from stickers collection, a limited batch of ANTYfest-branded T-shirts was released.

An awesome look to dANTS in, isn't it?

Festivals

ANTYfest launched at the beginning of September 2020, and just in the course of the first month ants were already contributing to the mission of saving music. Organizers of Le Guess Who?, a Netherlands-based festival, were able to address their officials and show them the initiative, in order to get support. Thanks to ANTYfest, Korean Busan Rock Festival was able to move forward the relations with their sponsor — who was completely thrilled both with the project’s idea and execution.

Watch the festivals' recap videos: