About

Embodying the principles of the Kyoto Cultivates Project to cultivate, nurture, and refine cultural initiatives in the city, and resonating with the pioneering hopes for humankind that the Kyoto Prize has shown, KYOTO STEAM—International Arts × Science Festival is a new art and culture event celebrating the intersection of art, science, and technology. Pre-events are taking place from 2020 to 2021 for the upcoming second edition of the festival to be held around the Okazaki area of Kyoto in 2022.
STEAM stands for “Science,” “Technology,” “Engineering,” “Art,” and “Mathematics.”
Kyoto CultivatesKyoto Cultivates, Nurtures, and Refines
The progress of humankind since the Industrial Revolution has stagnated due to global warming and catastrophic disasters that threat our survival, while religious conflicts and terrorism have made us more divided.
In addition, people have come to understand that the naive expectation that civilization will continue to progress and bring us happiness is, as a result of the development of information technology, accompanied by serious risks, making us increasingly doubtful about the future.
Against this backdrop, Kyoto, the city where an ancient culture has continued to pass down through the generations without interruption despite many natural disasters as well as wars over the centuries, must now cultivate, nurture, and refine our present-day activities and their sources toward a new future based on the East Asian attitude of coexistence between nature and humanity and on Japanese religious tolerance.
Through this project, we envision and disseminate a vision for society where people can embrace hope for the future of the world from Kyoto and Japan.
Festival Logo
The logo for the festival is a noren, a kind of short Japanese curtain hanging at the front of stores and restaurants. A noren serves as a gateway to another world as well as interface connecting different worlds. In Japanese, it also symbolizes identity. This logo expresses how KYOTO STEAM—International Arts × Science Festival serves as the entrance to one world while also existing in between different worlds.

Festival Logotype
Standing for “science,” “technology,” “engineering,” “arts,” and “mathematics,” STEAM is a newly coined acronym indispensable for future innovation in education and industries. The A is depicted larger than the rest of the letters because the arts harness and develop STEM and the variable existence of the arts flexibly connects all other fields. Moreover, two overlapping As indicate that there are new possibilities for arts even in the virtual world.

About the Key Visual



Outline
- Title
- KYOTO STEAM—International Arts × Science Festival: 2022 Prologue
- Event Periods
- Saturday, October 31–Sunday, December 6, 2020, March 2021
- Venues
- Kyoto City (Okazaki area)
- Organizer
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KYOTO STEAM—International Arts × Science Festival Executive Committee
- Chair of the Council
- Kadokawa Daisaku (Mayor of Kyoto City)
- Councilors
- Aoki Jun (Director, Kyoto City KYOCERA Museum of Art)
Akamatsu Tamame (Chief Director & President, Kyoto City University of Arts)
Horiba Atsushi (Chairman of the Board, Kyoto City Music Art Cultural Promoting Foundation) - Producer
- Hiratake Kozo (Professor, Faculty of Cultural Studies, Kyoto Sangyo University)