One person wearing a winter puffer coat holding an electric blue tote bag with the Mediale 'M' logo. Three eye balls surround the M, as if looking at it.

An international stage for the artists of tomorrow

Mediale
When York – the jewel in the UK’s Roman-Viking-medieval crown – was awarded UNESCO Creative City of Media Arts status, an ambitious organisation was assembled. Originally named York Mediale, they were tasked with curating groundbreaking digital 
art for a citywide festival. The challenges for the inaugural event were far-reaching: What defines ‘digital art’? How do we promote a festival for which the content doesn’t yet exist? How can we attract international talent to make new content? Will York break free of its historic shackles and bring the city, and the art, to new audiences? We playfully invited art to meet the future with a curious identity to match the bold artistic risks Mediale were spearheading. We positioned the art as the story, with the city of York being the grand canvas – a playground for the incredible artists to create and be seen. In just 7 years, Mediale has secured on-going Arts Council England funding and bloomed from a biennial 10-day citywide digital arts festival into an international media arts agency with a year-round programme that constantly pushes boundaries across the globe.

Visual identity
Verbal identity
Festival campaign
Digital experience
Motion

The logo for the first Mediale is shown front and centre on a black background, white text. The M placed large and proud above text reading York Mediale
The slogan Art, meet the future is set in the middle of the screen, with the M behind made up of a 3D constructed tubing system

The inaugural festival took the form of a city takeover, transforming cultural landmarks and spilling out onto the streets. It was important the brand could make a noise, but still sit back to let the events and artists be the hero.

An overlapping pile of flyers for the 2018 Mediale is shown in a way that the whole frame is filled with them pointing in every possible angle and orientation. The flyers are a bright and light blue, with eyeballs looking towards the M in the centre. The tag line, logo and some date information is laid out surrounding the corners of the flyers
Eight posters showing stills of the M, alongside interesting questions the festival hoped to address, are pasted on a billboard. A woman is seen walking past
A person stands in front of some of the art from the Mediale event, with the camera we see this picture from being placed behind them, framed in a mid shot. They are taking a picture themselves, on their phone, of whats in front of them. We see the art via this sense, as the photographer of the whole scene has the person and their phone in focus, with a short depth of field

Since the inaugural festival, Mediale has continued to grow and find new audiences as an international arts collective.

Its flagship artist residency programme, Immersive Assembly, brings together established and emerging digital talent from around the world.

Artists, technologists, film-makers and cultural influencers are all invited to share new ways of thinking and develop work in response to an evolving central theme.

A child stands in a large gallery space looking up at one of the portraits on the wall. They are illuminated by the same light that shines on the portrait. Surrounding the child we can see four more portaits lit up, with the rest of the room shrowded in darkness

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