The ITs Festival Amsterdam celebrates its 25th anniversary in June 2014. A great opportunity for the festival to involve its 'users' – the students – in an interim evaluation and scenarios for the future. For this reason the Dutch theater and dance schools are giving the ITs a present on the occasion of the anniversary: the Shadow Group, a group of 14 students from different study programmes in Amsterdam, Arnhem, Utrecht, Tilburg, Rotterdam and Maastricht who will intensively think and discuss what a festival for graduating performing artists should be today. On what kind of platform do young artists want to present themselves and meet each other? What kind of festival do they dream about? What is the role of a graduation festival, between education and the field?

In a week-long programme, there will be visiting speakers from the Netherlands and abroad to inspire the group. In addition, they will of course also visit the ITs festival – from watching a diverse series of performances to attending the side program – and the members of the Shadow Group will engage in discussions about the festival with many people, from visitor to director. All this to come up with findings and proposals about what a future graduation festival should be according to young performing artists.

The Shadow Group is a joint project of the Network Theater and the Network Dance and is supported by the Theater School, Toneelacademie Maastricht, Codarts, Fontys, Utrecht School of the Arts, ArtEZ and the Royal Conservatory of The Hague. It was conceived by Marijke Hoogenboom (professor of Performing Arts in Transition at the Theaterschool) and is organized, programmed and moderated by Anne Breure, who graduated from the Theaterschool's Mime Training in 2011.