o+ festival 2023

October 6-8, 2023

Submissions for the 13th Annual O+ Festival are now open!

Applications Open March 6th, 2023

All submissions due by May 1st, 2023 at 11:59p.m.

The O+ Festival is a celebration of art, music and wellness that offers access to health care for its participating artists and musicians while providing the community with an opportunity to experience the healing and transformative power of art in all forms. O+ (pronounced Oh Positive) fosters physical, mental and social well-being by connecting visual artists and musicians directly with a coalition of healthcare/wellness providers and resources in a shared vision to nurture the individual and the community. By exchanging the art of medicine for the medicine of art, O+ empowers communities to take control of their collective wellbeing.

O+ Festival Kingston is now accepting submissions from artists of ALL mediums and modalities including (but not limited to) 2D or 3D visual art, large-scale murals, sculpture, temporal work, installation, film, animation, projections, theater, dance and performance in public spaces to transform the city into a shared art experience. The O+ Art Committee aims to curate work that contributes to or reflects the meaningful juxtaposition between Kingston’s dynamic, multicultural neighborhood communities and compelling, radical, relevant contemporary artwork.

O+ Festival builds its program around a new theme each year and we invite artists to respond to the theme in their proposals. This year we are focusing on, investing in and celebrating the expansion of health care for artists and musicians, progressing toward our goal of providing medical support 365 days a year.

The theme of the 2023 O+ Festival is FO+rward.

Forward is an action, a description, a position, a choice and a direction.

Forward is where you are heading and the movement of a body through space, through pain, through healing. It is one day at a time. It is an arrow pointed in a direction determined by where you are facing or where you are trying to go. It is sending a letter on to a future location. It is moving ahead more quickly through time than if you were to just sit and wait for something to happen.

Forward, the adverb, is defined as “to move onward so as to make progress; toward a successful conclusion.” And when we consider progress, we think of it as forward movement towards a destination or towards a better, more complete ideal. Forward is movement, it is a choice to do better, to keep trying, to survive. Not back… only forward.

Additional information and reflections on the theme FO+rward can be foundHERE. We look forward to seeing and hearing your interpretations of this theme and to reviewing your work through the lens of all of its meanings.

All submissions will be reviewed, and the festival art program will be curated, by the O+ Art Committee - a group of O+ alumni, practitioners, industry professionals, etc. representing different practices, identities and perspectives. Accepted submissions will be invited to participate at this year’s festival in exchange for access to care in the O+ Artists’ Clinic.

Please remember that the festival takes place in traditional and non-conventional venues, both indoor and out. While there will be opportunities for more traditionally exhibited work we strongly encourage submissions that are site specific, nomadic or amenable to non-traditional/outdoor exhibition, installation or performance spaces.

*Work that is a collaboration or hybrid between visual art/movement and music or art/wellness may choose to submit in either category.