O+ FESTIVAL KINGSTON

October 10-12, 2025

Submissions for our 15th Annual O+ Festival are now open!

Applications Open March 10th, 2025
All submissions due by Sunday, May 4th, 2025 at 11:59p.m.

The O+ Festival is a celebration of art, music and wellness that provides health care for its participating artists while offering the community access to the transformative power of art in all forms. O+ (pronounced Oh Positive) fosters physical, mental and social well-being by connecting artists directly to a coalition of healthcare providers and wellness practitioners, of all disciplines, with a shared vision to nurture the individual and the community. By exchanging the art of medicine for the medicine of art, O+ empowers communities to take control of their collective wellbeing.

We welcome folks of all ages and levels of experience to read, recite, perform, sign, or speak words of all genres, languages and forms. This annual gathering around the WO+rd is not just a showcase of written work but also a meeting of minds, voices and perspectives in a supportive, celebratory environment of diverse expression. The WO+rd Committee prioritizes original work but is also open to found text, dramatic interpretations, and other linguistic innovations. We expect those submitting to provide appropriate and thorough credit for all text that is not your own.

O+ aims to curate work that contributes to or reflects the meaningful juxtaposition between Kingston’s dynamic, multicultural local community and a range of compelling, radical, relevant contemporary work in all forms. 

O+ Festival builds its program around a new theme each year and we ask writers to consider the theme in their proposals. In a time marked by political turbulence and division, art emerges as a potent instrument of the people—a medium through which voices are amplified, dissent is visualized, and collective resilience is forged.

This year’s’ O+ Festival explores POWER. 

What is power? Who holds it? How is it sustained? When do we wield it, when do we resist it? How do we, consciously or unconsciously, uphold structures that reinforce inequitable access to it? How do we share it? What happens when it is redefined or redistributed? How do we reclaim it when attempts are made at taking it from us? 

O+ Festival 2025 offers a space to reconsider power not just as something to be held, but as something to be shared, dismantled, or reframed. Submissions are welcome that explore the nature of power in all of its forms, structures, expressions and complexity. We seek work that examines how it is wielded, challenged, distributed and reimagined. The structures that sustain power, the forces that resist it, and the possibilities for its transformation. Some pieces may confront systems of dominance, exposing the weight of authority, surveillance, and inequality. Others celebrate empowerment, resilience, resistance and the transformative potential of collective action. The interplay between these perspectives underscores the fluidity of power—how it shifts, adapts, and manifests in both visible and invisible ways.

Learn more about this year’s theme HERE.

All submissions will be reviewed, and the festival program will be curated, by the O+ WO+rd Committee - a group of O+ alumni and industry professionals representing different creative practices, identities and perspectives. Accepted submissions will be invited to participate at this year’s festival in exchange for access to care in the O+ Artists’ Clinic.

Click HERE for detailed information on our mission. 

You can expect to be notified regarding your submission by mid-June. This year, we expect to receive dozens of submissions for a finite number of performance slots. WO+rd at O+ Festival is typically a 2 hour performance within the broader festival schedule. Each writer/performer selected for the WO+rd program with receive approximately 10min to present their work during the event at O+ Festival. On occasion, the committee may approach an applicant with an interest in providing them with a longer form opportunity at the festival but please submit with a shorter form performance in mind. We ask for your patience and understanding should your submission not be accepted for this year and encourage all who are not chosen for O+ Festival 2025 to reapply next year.

A note to O+ Alum: Lower priority may be given to those who participated in the previous three O+ Kingston Festivals (O+ 2024, 2023, or 2022), though we encourage all to apply. As our mission is centered in cultivating a diverse community of artists to whom we are offering access to healthcare, we want to make sure we reach those who have yet to participate and may have a need to acquire care.

We continue to expand our model of care through the year round O+ Exchange Clinic. Through art and wellness programming in that space, we are constantly looking for new ways provide care and opportunities to artists. If you aren’t accepted for this year’s festival, you may be contacted over the year ahead with additional ways to connect you and your work with O+. We thank you in advance for your understanding. 

Thank you for your interest in O+ Festival and our mission. 

We look forward to the opportunity to review your submission!

Positively, 

The 2025 O+ KINGSTON WO+rd Committee

Please do not let any barriers, personal, perceived or technical, get in the way of submitting your work. Reach out to us for assistance in applying if you need support of any kind at info@opositivefestival.org or by phone at (845) 399-5343.