Next Level Festival for Games – Games und digital culture in North Rhine-Westphalia

The end of the International Visitors Programme 2017 was marked by the visit of a total of six game developers and actors from the field of digital culture and gaming to the NEXT LEVEL Festival for Games at the NRW Forum in Düsseldorf. The visitors' programme was linked to the art and artist exchange programme TRANSFER INTERNATIONAL of the NRW KULTURsekretariat.

In addition to visiting the festival, the participants from Belgium, the Netherlands and Serbia had the opportunity for an intensive exchange with actors from NRW at a network meeting. Represented were Alain Bieber, artistic director of the NRW-Forum Düsseldorf, Torben Kohring from the Fachstelle für Jugendmedienkultur NRW, Lars Terlinden from the Kompetenzzentrum Kultur- und Kreativwirtschaft of the City of Düsseldorf, the Ministry of Culture and Science of North Rhine-Westphalia through Reinhard Krämer, head of the department for international cultural policy, as well as two participating artists of the festival, Brigitta Muntendorf and Rochus Aust.

The visitors' programme also included a meeting with Prof. Björn Bartholdy and Federico Alvarez from the Cologne Game Lab at the Cologne University of Applied Sciences and a visit to the "Digital Games" exhibition at the Ludwig Forum in Aachen.