AVA LONDON 2024

︎ AVA LONDON

AVA London 2024 took a brand new format over five iconic central London venues: The British Library, The Standard, KOKO, The House of KOKO & HERE at Outernet ✼

Emphasising lectures, digital arts, culture & the international music community, the conference programme was our biggest and boldest yet. I curated the conference programme including lectures, masterclasses, music workshops and hot topic panels with speakers like: Brian Eno, Charli XCX, Grace Ladoja, Laurent Garnier, Resident Advisor, Trippin, TraTraTrax, XL Recordings, United Visual Artists, TikTok, It’s Nice That, Pitch Studios, XL Recordings, Sónar, Primavera, Mutek, British Council & more...

We presented two large live club events, and a live-multimedia showcase of audiovisual work from Pitch Studios alongside an amazing line up of world-class DJs at HERE at Outernet. I led on the marketing capaign, partnerships and and brand identity across all facets of AVA London.

We also debuted two large new community-led projects this year, AVA Forum – and the AVA Creator’s Forum. AVA Forum is an international summit for independent festival organisers, with the aim of creating a safe space to discuss the most pressing issues internationally.

The AVA Creator’s Forum is an Arts Council supported talent development programme aimed at young people and emerging music producers. This debuted as a two week progrmame coindiding with AVA London. I led on both of these projects internally, from strategy development to partnerships, hiring and management of external project managers ensuring a successful launch in Y1. This was a dream project.

Highlights

✼ Charli XCX headlining the RA Exchange Live at the British Library.

✼ Elijah's lecture: "If you love music, you should learn how to DJ" at KOKO Theare.

✼ Brian Eno in deep conversation with Canadian guitarist Donna Grantis, about what music can do for the planet at the British Library. Followed by Donna Grantis’ intimate live Guitar performance at KOKO, a first for AVA London.

✼ Matt Clark from United Visual Artists presenting a visual lecture titled 'Other Spaces' guiding us through a compelling 20-year journey of UVA's art practice.

✼ Trippin hosted two panel talks that I curated, on contemporary culture, global music and micro trends Ft: DJ Lomalinda from Colombia, Romana from Belo Horizonte, Derek from Nyege Nyege festival in Uganda & the inimitable Paul-Simon Geddis from Sónar.

✼ 'Re-Queering Dancefloors' for this talk a diverse panel will discuss the ins-and-outs of organising parties–for queer people, by queer people ft. Alex Nikolov, Romana & Cass O'Grady.

PITCH STUDIOS™ and It's Nice That talking visual identities and taking an empathetic approach to art and design. I worked closely with Pitch on both of AVA's visual identities this year, they've nailed it – and to celebrate will debut a live visuals show at Outernet.

✼Laurent Garnier x Séamas O'Reilly
✼ Grace Ladoja x Tara Kumar
✼ Kenya Grace x TikTok
✼ Will Aspden (XL Recordings) x Emerald
✼ 25 years of fabric

CONOR MCTERNAN

CONOR MCTERNAN

CONORMCTERNAN1@GMAIL.COM