ABOUT

IST. Arts & Culture Festival (IST. Festival) is founded by Demet Muftuoğlu Eşeli and Alphan Eşeli of ISTANBUL’74 in 2010. It is an annual, three-day festival that offers a hybrid program of panels and talks, exhibitions, workshops, screenings and performances that aim to establish and forge cultural and artistic relations, by bringing together some of the world’s most talented and creative minds.

In the course of three days, the admission-free festival offers the public audience the unique opportunity to attend open panels and talks, screenings, workshops, exhibitions while giving them the chance to experience artistic collaborations and performances based on the past, current and future topics in arts and culture. Attended by writers, directors, actors, film makers, musicians, artists, designers and performers, the festival brings together creative minds that share a compassion that leads to a global vocabulary of emotions.

Each year, IST. Festival focuses on a main theme that is relevant to contemporary culture, and accordingly, the festival committee picks the participating guest speakers as well as the panel topics.

IST. Festival has grown into a highly anticipated cultural event, leading creatives from different cultures and artistic disciplines to influence one another in unexpected ways, and thus paving the way for eclectic conversations and further collaboration between participants. With a vision to travel beyond borders, IST. Festival has broadened its reach to a wider global audience, launching new biannual editions in 2019. The first one premiered in Rome in May 2019 in collaboration with Delfina Delettrez Fendi and Nico Vascellari.