The pandemic forced all music events around the world to be cancelled or postponed indefinitely. Musicians had to switch online, and since that the Internet had been flooded with live-streaming home-based concerts and pre-recorded shows. It’s a great way out of the situation, yet there’s almost nothing to replace the feeling of a live offline gig. Initial excitement connected with the new format of music shows gradually faded, and people got bored.

At the same time, the industry of music festivals had been suffering immensely because of the social distancing regulations.

The idea was to recreate the spirit of the crowd with those who don’t have to follow the rules of lockdown. Ants are social insects that demonstrate human-like principles of cooperation.

While in 2020 the music industry was on hold, festivals were looking forward to staying in touch with their fans. Ural Music Night united 10 music festivals from Russia, the Netherlands, Slovakia, South Korea, Latvia, Israel, Nigeria and Serbia to participate in a “macro-scale” music event with ants and made them happen — in the only way possible during that time.

The strategy was to make the Ural Music Night festival the “idea leader” of the international initiative, to unite the world festivals and help them happen in a new format with unique engagement effect.

The project pre-launched on August 30 with a broadcast of a 5-hour concert. 20 international music bands were performing live to 8000 actual farm-grown ants.11 micro-scale replica sets of the 11 participating festivals were hand-made to host actual ants. Real photos and construction plans were used to recreate the stages and their surroundings.

On August 31, the website was launched. It is a kind of an “ant-nest” where you can “travel” around the map of festivals, learn about them, buy their merch and donate money to them. Or just simply entertain yourself watching the 11 recap videos with partying ants, remembering the good old days and making plans for future trips.

The online concert attracted thousands of viewers from 45 countries. The project got featured in an extraordinary number of media publications all over the globe (400+). Other media & PR results include: 117M media impressions and 100% positive response.

ANTYfest was a way for the participating festivals to attract attention to their quarantine-related problems. They were able to contact their governments and sponsors and demonstrate the international initiative.

The result was additional financial support. $194K was collected in the course of the 1st month since the launch.