With the full Promised Land Art Festival agenda now available and the event itself starting in less than a week, it’s about time to start planning your on-site schedules. Sure, you could just be ambitious and try to participate in just about everything, but with so many activities and attractions on offer, the social nature of the festival, and any last-minute changes to the agenda during the festival (which sometimes may be inevitable!), having your own plan is the wise thing to do. To make the process easy, we’ve put together these tips with creative industry professional, event enthusiast, and friend of PLAF, Spiridon Giannakis. So, for one last time join us for PLAF ATTENDEE 101, this time with a focus on assembling and navigating your schedule at Promised Land Art Festival. Let’s go!

Download the official Promised Land Art Festival 2024 App!

We can’t stress enough just how essential our official PLAF app can be during the festival, or even before it! It features a digital version of both your ticket for accreditation purposes, as well as the map of the venue and the festival program — quite useful if you somehow manage to lose the physical one you’ll get from us when picking up your badge. Not only that, but it will also keep you updated on any and all program updates should those happen, as well as connect with other participants, sign up for workshops, rate the lectures and speakers, create and manage your activity calendar, and more! It’s available for both iOS and Android devices for free and, while not obligatory, it is highly recommended you install it on your mobile device as soon as possible.

Define your priorities

If your goal is to make the most of your attendance at the Promised Land Art Festival, know what you want to leave with. If your focus is getting a portfolio review, make sure you have the right portfolio (or multiple portfolios depending on what it is you’re aiming for), know who will be available to meet with, and when. If you’re interested in a particular or multiple talks from a given discipline, make a list of your must-haves and nice-to-haves and stick to it — this will help you keep track of on-site development regarding timings and might just save you from missing the stuff that’s super important for you.

Investigate online

There might be more aspects to a talk, workshop, or speaker that could be of interest to you beyond what’s on the Promised Land Art Festival website. Spend some time looking up the artists of particular interest to you online before arriving in Łódź. Maybe they’ve worked on IPs that you are very invested in, but couldn’t mention in their short bio we’ve published. Or perhaps they’ve worked for a company that you’d love to work with but didn’t know about previously. Or perhaps a workshop will cover a tool that you’re not yet using but could prove useful in your professional development. Researching these kinds of details will definitely help you navigate Promised Land Art Festival’s on-site landscape more efficiently.

Talk to your peers

If you are unsure about which talk, activity, workshop, or demo you want to check out, talk to other artists from your circle, not necessarily ones you know will be attending PLAF. They might have insight beyond the program, speaker bio, or other information available online that can tell you why it would prove beneficial to participate in a specific talk, workshop, or other activity. You can also try to chat with the speakers directly to learn more about what they will cover in their presentation.

Allow happy accidents

As much as it’s important to work out your own schedule beforehand, it’s equally important to leave some room to mingle with people attending the event. You could just get the feedback you were looking for from a source you never expected to yield it. And who knows, maybe you will end up sharing a drink with someone you’ve been looking up to for a long time, too, which just might be the start of a beautiful friendship or even a fruitful, professional collaboration for many years to come!

Don't depend solely on your memory

If you see an announcement regarding a change in the program, don’t assume you’ll remember about it. Make sure you’ll remember by writing it down or taking a photo. If a talk or workshop is taking place in an area you’re having trouble finding, jot down a step-by-step guide for your future self or snap a picture of something that can act as your waypoint on your way there beforehand — end of the day, getting to where you need to be on time is more important than worrying about raising a few eyebrows.

And so, we’ve reached the conclusion of this final PLAF ATTENDEE 101 article. As always, if you have any additional pro tips you’d like to share with other participants, feel free to share them in the comments on our social media under the post linking to the article. As for us, we’d like to wish you a grand time assembling your own schedule, a safe trip to Łódź, Poland, and an amazing time at Promised Land Art Festival. See you soon at EC1 Łódź!