YORK Mediale will return in autumn 2020 as Britain's newest and biggest international digital media arts festival becomes biennial.

Plans are underway for York to play to host a second festival after the inaugural event concluded at the weekend, following an intensive ten days of installations, world-premiere performances, cutting-edge technology and a four-day symposia series that "explored the future of art, technology and everything in between".

Creative director Tom Higham said: "It has been a really inspiring and exhilarating ten days. We set ourselves an extremely ambitious target, with more than 30 innovative, technically demanding projects to commission, curate and produce across the festival.

"We are incredibly proud of what the York Mediale team managed to achieve. We promised something new, something challenging and something extraordinary, and that is exactly what we have delivered. We have learnt some really useful lessons from our experiences and feedback from our visitors, but overall it has been a great success."

Mr Higham continued: "As well as presenting world-class media art, we have made so many valuable connections and built some incredible partnerships, not only across York, but across the world. We have demonstrated the benefits to business of working hand in hand with artists and brought new creative energy and ideas to the city. We have hosted gigs that blew people’s minds, in partnership with local promoters, and hosted DJs and musicians who have never played in the city before."

Promoted as the festival with the invitation "art, meet the future", York Mediale is the fulcrum of York being designated the first and only UK UNESCO Creative City of Media Arts in December 2014, with the aim of "artists of all kinds using technologies and media to redefine and tell the stories of our cities, our landscapes and our lives".

"The reactions from visitors to York Mediale have been wide ranging, from those who have shared their own experiences of the housing crisis when visiting the Token Homes sculpture by Matthew Plummer-Fernandez in King's Square, to those who brought flowers in response to Deep Lab UK’s reading of 'The List' of 34,361 refugee deaths," said Mr Higham. "People have obviously connected with the work, which has been really heartening."

The impact of the first York Mediale has been felt across the world as a result of representatives of the global UNESCO Creative Cities network congregating in York. Many of the works commissioned for the festival will now go on tour, reaching new audiences in Britain and further afield, while visitors to York can still see the Strata – Rock – Dust – Stars exhibition at York Art Gallery until November 25.

Rachael Norton-Drew, York Mediale's festival and company manager, concluded: "We are extremely grateful to all of the artists, funders and partners who have supported us on our incredible journey to realise the festival this year. We are delighted that we will be able to realise our ambition to become a biennial festival and to be in a position to plan for our return in 2020."

Details of dates for the 2020 event will be announced in due course.

Charles Hutchinson