The pandemic forced all music events around the world to be cancelled or postponed indefinitely. At the same time, the industry of music festivals has suffered immensely because of the social distancing regulations. Ural Music Night has united 10 festivals all around the world and made them happen through ANTYfest. The idea was to recreate the spirit of the crowd with those who don’t have to follow the lockdown rules — with actual ants. The project pre-launched 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. Then the website was launched. It is a kind of an “ant-nest” where you can “travel” around the map of festivals, buy their merch and donate money to them.
