In May 2023, EngageMedia, in collaboration with a consortium of partners, will host the Asia-Pacific Digital Rights Festival 2023. Over 300 participants will join the week-long event, to be hosted across a variety of creative spaces, including galleries, museums, cafes, and theatres. The festival will be held in Chiang Mai, Thailand.
The festival builds on EngageMedia’s experience in organising a host of digital rights events over the past decade: convening the Coconet series of camps in the Philippines and Indonesia and co-organising RightsCon in Manila in 2015.
Next year, the Asia-Pacific Digital Rights Festival will convene and catalyse important conversations and collaborations to address vital issues, including digital authoritarianism, free speech and media freedom, disinformation, digital safety, digital labour, and much more. Its primary aim is to infuse the digital rights movement with an even broader range of allied actors: journalists, media-makers, digital rights and human rights advocates, artists, designers, funders, and technologists.
The festival will have a strong emphasis on media and creativity and will include exhibitions, performances, music, media making, and a film festival. This digital rights film festival will be open to the public on a per screening basis. We will also host several large public discussions that will not require a festival pass or invite. These high profile events will bring speakers from across the region and around the world, aiming to create bridges across the media, technology, and human rights fields. Creating such bridges begins with engaging a broad array of partners to co-design the event, ensuring there is buy-in, ownership, and participation.
We will also encourage satellite events before, during, and after the festival. These could take the form of training sessions, meetings, issue-based convergences, and much more.
Activities will be hosted in multiple venues, with participants walking, biking, or taking short rides between venues.
Some travel sponsorships will be available, with an application process made public in early 2023. For those who cannot participate in person, many activities, including the plenary sessions, will be livestreamed, with recordings of talks, panel discussions, workshops, and other activities uploaded to Cinemata.
To stay up to date about the festival, please fill out the form below.
If you are a funder and are keen to support the event, please do contact us.
Do you want to be part of the team behind the festival? EngageMedia is looking for an Event Manager who will oversee this event – as well as other convening events in the lead up to May 2023. Learn more and apply here.
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