EPCOT International Festival of the Arts
EPCOT International Festival of the Arts is an annual winter festival at EPCOT at Walt Disney World Resort in Florida, devoted to the visual, performing and culinary arts. Held from mid-January to late February or early March and included with regular admission, it is the newest of EPCOT's four seasonal festivals, joining the EPCOT International Flower & Garden Festival, the EPCOT International Food & Wine Festival and the EPCOT International Festival of the Holidays.
History
The festival premiered on January 13, 2017. In its first edition it ran only on weekends — Fridays through Mondays — over six weeks, ending February 20. Disney presented it as filling the gap in the calendar between the holiday season and the spring Flower & Garden Festival, a period that had previously been one of EPCOT's quietest.
The format proved successful enough to become a daily event from its second year, and it has since run for roughly five to six weeks each winter. Its scheduling in the coolest part of the Florida year distinguishes it from the other festivals and shapes its programme, which leans more heavily on indoor galleries, workshops and stage performances than its food-led counterparts.
Visual arts
Galleries and sales tents around World Showcase present work by Disney-associated and independent artists, many of whom appear in person for signings. Exhibitions have included displays devoted to historical Disney artists such as Mary Blair and Herb Ryman, whose concept work underpins attractions and films across the company's history.
Participatory art is a defining strand. Guests contribute, a few brushstrokes at a time, to a large paint-by-numbers mural that fills in over the course of each festival day, and chalk artists produce large pavement works, including three-dimensional illusions, on the walkways around the park. Figment, the dragon mascot of Journey into Imagination with Figment, serves as the festival's emblematic character, appearing on its merchandise and in a Figment-themed scavenger hunt in which his image is hidden inside famous works of art around World Showcase.
Performing arts
The Disney on Broadway concert series is the festival's headline entertainment. Performers from Disney's stage musicals — including productions of Aladdin, Frozen, The Lion King and Newsies — give several short concerts nightly at the America Gardens Theatre, usually in rotating pairs, performing songs from the shows in which they have appeared. Dining packages with reserved seating are offered.
Around the park, smaller-scale performance includes living statues, acrobats, musicians and artists who draw or paint as a staged performance, alongside scheduled workshops and seminars, some ticketed separately, covering animation drawing, photography and other techniques.
Culinary arts
Food studios — the festival's equivalent of the Food & Wine marketplaces — present dishes explicitly styled as compositions, with plating, colour and deconstruction treated as part of the concept. Portions and pricing follow the pattern of EPCOT's other festivals, and a cookie stroll and other passport mechanics have been adapted to the arts theme in some years.
See also
- EPCOT
- EPCOT International Food & Wine Festival
- EPCOT International Flower & Garden Festival
- Journey into Imagination with Figment