In agricultural terms, “open field” refers to the clearing of wilderness to create pastoral grazing land. Artistically, OpenField exists as a place beyond accepted structures, offering possibilities of interactive, collaborative, hybrid, cross-form, experimental work that allows for great innovation in the ways art can be made, presented and experienced. 

Artists and curators are invited to respond to the theme: Heads in the Clouds. The phrase evokes a dreamlike liminal space where possibilities and interpretations are truly endless. An artist with their head in the clouds may be a dreamer, escaping reality through phantasmagoric, dazzling displays that delight and distract. They might dream of innovation and reform, engaging with the realities of the modern and historic world, and proposing actionable change. Heads in the Clouds invites response to ignorance, cognitive dissonance and infrastructures of power - highlighting the collective responsibility of both people and their higher/hired powers to be and do better for the survival of the human and non-human world.

OpenField 2027 creates space for the exchange of knowledge and ideas where artists, collaborators and audiences alike can throw caution to the wind to reflect, challenge, and dream in a collusion of real and imagined realities. 

OpenField acknowledges that we live and work on stolen land and we pay respect to the Traditional Custodians, Ancestors, Elders and communities of the Dharawal and Dhurga Aboriginal language groups. The festival supports and invites First Nation perspectives and subscribes to truth telling, recognition and regeneration, especially stories from traditional custodians.