With a focus on artists making work in front of an audience, the Festival of Live Art (FOLA) is the only event of its kind in Melbourne.

FOLA features local and international artists working across multiple platforms utlising six venues across four suburbs (Footscray, North Melbourne, St Kilda and the CBD), which includes some 40 events. Performances will be held on the street, websites and phones to allow audiences to observe, participate and create over 16 days from March 14 to March 30.

Artists and performers for the mainly free festival include Song-Ming Ang, Beth Buchanan, Sam Routledge and Martyn Coutts, Emma Beech and Julie Vulcan. The Footscray Community Arts Centre-curated three-week festival opens on Friday, March 14 and includes the new annual symposium Art & Encounter, by artists Amy Spiers and James Oliver, where issues of contemporary practice for socially engaged, participatory and live art will be debated.

Other highlight FOLA events include the final weekend’s The 24-Hour Experience: Melbourne, which features 24 live works that take place on the hour, every hour over 24 hours. Curated by Gorkem Acaroglu, each show unfolds at a different site in the CBD and is a collaboration with Theatre Works, Arts House and Footscray Community Arts Centre. Other events include Tristan Meecham’s Game Show, part of the Arts House programmed middle weekend, a showbiz spectacle that examines one man’s pursuit of fame. Another event of note is the final weekend’s Credible Likeable Superstar Role Model – the 2013 Edinburgh Fringe First Award winner, which is a provocative protest against attempts to sexualise and use children for profit. Artist Bryony Cummings and her nine-year-old niece Taylor star.

The Festival of Live Art runs from March 14 to March 30.

footscrayarts.com

melbourne.vic.gov.au/artshouse

theatreworks.org.au