Beyond the Stage: Reimagining Gabala Music Festival

For the 15th Gabala Music Festival in Azerbaijan, Chaika Events transformed the Congress Center into an interactive cultural space — built from the ground up for art, workshops, play and participation.

What happens when a music festival moves beyond the stage?
For the 15th edition of the Gabala Music Festival, we wanted to create another dimension to the experience — one that would exist alongside the musical programme and invite audiences to become participants rather than spectators.
The Congress Center became the setting for this idea.
Instead of approaching it as a conventional exhibition venue, we imagined a temporary creative world: somewhere visitors could discover art, make things, experiment, meet and spend time together.
The exhibition was conceived for adults and children alike, with interactive installations, creative zones and a daily programme of workshops open to everyone.

The transformation began with the architecture itself.
We built new walls and structures inside the Congress Center, dividing its scale into a sequence of individual spaces and experiences. What had been an existing venue gradually became something entirely different.
Every area was considered in relation to what would happen there: how people would enter, where they might stop, how workshops would operate and how adults and children could experience the exhibition simultaneously.
It was a temporary environment, but it needed to function like a permanent one.
That balance between imagination and practicality shaped the project from the beginning.

We were interested in moving away from the idea of an exhibition as something you simply walk through and observe.
Here, interaction was part of the design.
Visitors could explore the stands, take part in activities, join a workshop or return another day for a different experience. The programme ran throughout the festival, allowing the space to continually change as different people occupied and used it.
At different moments, the Congress Center could feel like a gallery, a studio, a workshop, a playground or a meeting place.
That fluidity became part of its character.

For the festival, Chaika Events invited artists from the UK to Azerbaijan to collaborate on the project.
Their participation brought another perspective to the programme and created an opportunity for exchange — not only between different creative disciplines, but between artists and audiences.
Rather than placing artistic work at a distance, the format allowed creativity to happen in the room: through workshops, interaction and the simple act of making something together.

Behind the openness of the final experience was a complex production.
Temporary architecture had to be built. Interactive areas needed to work alongside workshops. Spaces for children and adults had to coexist. Visitor movement had to remain intuitive while multiple activities were happening at once.
For Chaika Events, these practical questions are part of the creative process rather than something that comes afterwards.
The concept determines the space. The space determines how people move. And the way people move through it ultimately determines how the experience feels.

For the 15th Gabala Music Festival, that meant looking at an existing Congress Center and asking not simply what we could put inside it, but what else it could become.
For the duration of the festival, the answer was a place for music, art, making and curiosity — a festival within the festival itself.

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