Best Festival Ever is an interactive performance that enhances teamwork and communication, building skills in understanding and managing complex systems.

Using hands-on board game mechanisms, participants plan and manage their own music festival. Working together, the audience takes control all the way from programming the bands to producing the final concert.

Developed with research scientists from University College London, the Stockholm Resilience Centre and CSIRO, the show explores concepts from Systems Science and Resilience Thinking.

Appropriate for policy-makers, businesses, conferences, management teams, community leaders, arts and festival audiences.

“The ideal mix of a learning experience and team-building—absolutely unique in its approach, and a brilliant alternative to standard corporate away day sessions.”
— Julie Dodd, Zone Creative UK

“Systems science is abstract and can be difficult to communicate. Boho’s work builds well-crafted, entertaining metaphors, bringing these concepts to life for audiences from all walks of life. We sorely need this kind of experience.”
— Dr Nicky Grigg, CSIRO

REVIEWS AND MEDIA COVERAGE

"Best Festival Ever puts everyone in the moment for every part of the festival manager’s rollercoaster ride and offers a fun, engaging and creative way to introduce audiences to the insights and ideas from systems science."
— Australian Arts Review

"While working together, playing games with consequences for your festival, and interacting with the narrative, you are incidentally learning more about things like systems science, game theory and more... interesting, fast-paced, and fun."
— Stage Whispers

★★★★ "The strength of the show is its gamification of complex systems theory, which is explained clearly and engagingly wherever it arises."
— The Brag

"Billed as ‘part-theatre show, performance lecture and board game’, this immersive experience is a Boalian exercise in confronting the ecological impact of collective decision-making."
— Realtime Arts

Best Festival Ever and Boho's work was featured in New Scientist, January 2016, in the article 'All the world's a game...'

SCIENCE PARTNERS
In researching this work, Boho worked closely with scientists from University College London's Environment Institute, as well as drawing on work produced by CSIRO's Complex Systems Science Team and research from the Stockholm Resilience Centre.

FUNDING PARTNERS
Boho received financial support for this work through the Australia Council for the Arts, Arts NSW, the NED Foundation, Arts House Melbourne, University College London and the London Science Museum.

PRESENTING PARTNERS
The 2014 tour of Best Festival Ever took place with the support of venues including the Battersea Arts Centre, Kings College London, the London Science Museum, Central Saint Martins College, Forum for the Future, Zone Creative Agency, the Stockholm Resilience Centre, Färgfabriken and Miljöverkstan.