Paradigm

Paradigm Festival, breeding ground for artistic talent

Paradigm Festival (music and arts) is constantly looking for creative minds and talented performers. Paradigms vision and theme in 2018 is freedom in arts and expression. We invite you to create an amazing work of art and/or performance, by working on an area, object, or idea. Our terrain is very big so we can offer you lots of space for you to freely express your creativity.

Send in a plan for your own art/performance project

If you want to create your own piece of art, decorate your own stage, to perform, please send us your plan. If your plan is approved, you will get a budget agreed upon with the organization and full freedom to execute your idea. This means you will be responsible for everything regarding your own project as well. Responsibilities include: finding volunteers, making a realistic budget, creating a planning, and providing a list of necessary materials and tools. Important: most of the materials you’ll be working with (70%-80%) have to be recycled and repurposed materials. The realization of your plans will take place during the festival_build_up_manifestation, from Monday 09-07 till Friday 09-08. Please send an email with a detailed description of your plan to [email protected] before 01-07-2018.

You need a couple of things to qualify for applying:

  • Creative mind
  • Able to work on a project basis
  • Ability to keep an overview
  • Skilled with tools and materials
  • Responsible
  • Ability to lead (if you are working with your own group of volunteers)
  • Safety comes first, we expect everyone to work safely and sober

Sign up to volunteer

If you want to help out during the festival_build_up_manifestation from Monday 09-07 till Friday 09-08, please send an email to [email protected] or sign up at www.paradigm050.com/en/volunteers. Any of you who has helped us before knows how much fun it can be to work on festival construction at Paradigm. The vibe on the terrain is great every year because of all the love, creativity, passion, humor, innovation, and inspiration that’s being channelled by everyone. We will be providing meals and drinks during these weeks, as well as capable team leaders, professionals, plenty of construction materials, relevant tools and very detailed plans. These are a couple of the projects we’ve got queued up for this year’s festival:

  • Decorating the outdoor stages
  • Helping out art/performance project leaders
  • Cooking for the volunteers daily
  • Maintaining the garden
  • Constructing a community kitchen/pavilion
  • Making the camping area festival-ready
  • Building the new chill out stage
  • Constructing new bars on the terrain
  • Building an eco-dome
  • Signing on the terrain

We’ve got the following rewards lined up for anyone who wants to help out for one or multiple days:

  • ½ token per hour
  • Work shifts that are flexible in nature. You can make your own hours and pick the days that work best for you!
  • Anyone who helps out 5 days or more will get 1 personal ticket for one of the following events: Paradigm Festival Friday, Saturday, Sunday, NYE, or NYD

Paradigm NYE: More intimacy, more areas, a theatre and the EMS

PARADIGM NYE: MORE INTIMACY, MORE AREAS, A THEATRE AND EMS

Paradigm NYE: More intimacy, more areas, a theatre in the chill-out and the launch of EMS. 

Paradigm NYE is right around the corner and will be different compared to previous editions: more intimacy, more areas and a theatre in the chill out. The new EMS foundation will play an important part in this. We asked Paradigm founder Paul Grimmius about this in a Q&A. 

Paul, can you extrapolate a little on what the EMS stands for?
EMS, or Electronic Music Society, was founded by Paradigm in 2015 and is based upon a few ideals I share with my partner Piter Terpstra. In the meantime we have handed over the baton to a new group of people, and with that we have also resigned out seats on the board. However, as Paradigm we will, just like other parties, cooperate with EMS. The EMS is a creative cradle and will task itself with relevant social issues regarding art, culture, durability and society. There are a couple of projects being launched just so we can bridge these issues together and work them out. Think about projects where people can participate who have to make ends meet from a government allowance or have personal (mental) issues which restricts them everywhere they go. They are offered new opportunities by co-initiating or executing plans within the EMS. There is a need for it in Groningen, but it doesn’t yet exist. Paradigm has offered its terrain as a platform which the EMS can use for its projects. The terrain will be open for these activities throughout the year. The ultimate goal is to expand these projects beyond Paradigms terrain and onto other areas at the Suikerunie terrain and other organizations within the city. For example, one of the board members of the EMS, Mark Fischer, works for the grand theatre in the city centre, thus providing a great opportunity to forge a bond between these organizations. Presently, we’ve made a great cultural programme for Paradigm NYE together with the EMS.

And what does that programme look like?
Paradigm has always incorporated dance and a variety of entertainment during the club nights and festivals. We’re also offering opportunities to artists who have yet to graduate art academy or have recently done so. We want to boost this through cooperation with the EMS. Several projects have been prepared for NYE with the help from the Poetic Disasters Club from Club Guy & Roni, Wordbites and dance group Stilletta. We ‘re creating an intimate chillout in the area that used to house our NYE mainstage. A theatre is being build in right in the middle of it and will house between 300 and 400 people. The programme will continue all night long. A new performance will be shown every 10 minutes. It will be a diverse night, ranging from modern dance to poetic speech. We strongly feel that our visitors should have a nice and cozy place to chill out, but we think it’s also important to expose them to cultural events. We will further elaborate on the programme at the bottom of the page.

What else can you tell us about the NYE programme? 
We concluded that the mainstage wasn’t perfectly situated during the last two NYE editions in Het Zeefgebouw. The space is too large and that makes it, in our eyes, unsuitable to comfortably dance. That doesn’t fit our bill. Intimacy is a value we hold very dear regarding our events, which is something we can’t provide in that area. We lowered the booth last year but it still left us unsatisfied. It wasn’t intimate enough. The area didn’t beam with the bustling energy that we’re used to. That’s why we took the layout for NYE back to the drawing board and made some changes. This year the BALL-room, the Basement and the LABB will be open. Every single area will have an itimate setting and has its own head of decoration who will create unique stage designs, just like our visitors are used to seeing at our events like Paradigm Festival.

Can you introduce them to us? 
Joke Schaper, our Paradigm Festival decoration manager is responsible for the BALL-room stage decoration. She has created a plan revolving around lucid dreams. Our carpenters are at the ready to start constructing the plans. It’s amazing to see everyone working together. Cor Nijhuis and Blackhole Decorations are going to create a psychedelic vibe in the LLAB. Puck van Rassel and Liza Renee Verboon are currently making their awesome visual-concept a reality in the basement. Every design will contribute to an intimate vibe.

Q&A with Abstract Division

We’re getting ready for the first clubnight since we closed our club at the Helsinkistraat. Tickets are sold out and everyone’s looking forward to it, including Abstract Division! We asked them a couple of questions beforehand.  

When we were searching for the act to fill in the spot between Steve O’Sullivan and you guys, you immediately said you wanted to pick up right where Steve will leave off. What are you plans for the performance? 
We usually don’t really have a plan beforehand, but we rather follow our impulses and spontaneity to react to each other’s performance. It’s important to us to feel the crowd, the location, the timeslot and know about the other artists who are playing before or after us. We noticed that it works to start off somewhat deep in a set so people can gradually go with our flow. That’s the reason that taking over after Steve seems so perfect. His minimalistic style is a great foundation upon which we can expand. And then there’s our taste in music, which reaches far more (sub)genres than just plain techno, but also ambient and some of the hardest bangers. It’s safe to say that you’ll hear a broad spectrum of subgenres during Saturday’s performance!

Your new EP (together with Patrick Skoog) recently got released on Figure Jams, Len Faki’s new sublable. We’re perceiving a lot more experimental sounds than on regular Figure releases. How did this release came to be?  
We met Len Faki at Awakenings Festival and we had great connection from the start. Len Faki is one of the hardest working DJ’s in our scene, and the releases on his labels have a high quality standard. Besides, the Figure crew is a passionate group of people, so it was a no-brainer when they asked us to send over some tracks for their new sublabel. We sent over a couple of tracks and they were signed immediately. We were very pleased about that. The first release did very well, which brings great opportunities for the future.

In light of new releases, what’s on the program for you guys?  
We have some great projects up ahead. At the moment we are working together with some other artists. We can not say too much about this, but these projects will show various aspects of our work; this is something we intend to always do. Our long-awaited remix for Re:Axis will be released on vinyl this month and we also contributed to an Obscura compilation with one of our tracks. Obscura is the new label of Agents Of Times.

And how about gigs?
We will play in Italy, Germany, Switzerland and Poland in the near future. We are very much looking forward to ADE 2017. We will be hosting our own Dynamic Reflection event at Radion, in cooperation with HIGGS. Matrixxman, SHDW & Obscure Shape and many other great artists will join us and the event will be streamed live on Facebook. It’s always a great pleasure to see a lot of familiar faces and it will be a great party too!