Beyond the Festival: Turning Encounters into Opportunities - at Young Stage 2025

Every year, the Young Stage Festival in Basel becomes a vibrant meeting point for artists and industry professionals from around the world — a week filled with performances, discovery, and inspiration.

But when the lights fade and the stages fall silent, one question remains: How can these valuable encounters turn into lasting connections? That’s the question The Pending set out to answer.

Bildcredits: Pablo Wünsch Blanco

The Pilot Project

In collaboration with Young Stage, The Pending launched a pilot initiative to make post-festival networking smoother, smarter — and genuinely meaningful.

Every participating artist created a professional portfolio inside The Pending App — a unified profile showcasing media, credits, and contact details.

All artists were then gathered in a curated digital project space on The Pending Agency platform, where accredited bookers and producers could easily find them again after the event, browse their acts, and get in touch directly.

✨ No more scattered notes. No more lost business cards.

Just one structured, accessible hub for authentic follow-ups and lasting connections.

This was a glimpse of what we’ve always envisioned — technology that keeps creativity connected and turns a festival week into a network that continues to grow long after the lights fade.

The Workshop

Alongside the pilot, The Pending team — with a workshop led by founder Tim Kriegler and co-founder Hubert Hofmann — invited artists to reflect on what visibility means today and how digital tools can support it.

The conversation centered around the idea that being seen isn’t only about social media reach, but about building a clear and lasting professional presence — one that represents the artist authentically and stays accessible to those who want to collaborate or reconnect.

Through the lens of The Pending ecosystem — the App, the Portfolio, and the Agency — we presented how these elements connect: how artists can grow their presence within a creative community, how professional portfolios help them stay visible beyond the festival week, and how the Agency links those profiles directly to bookers and opportunities worldwide.

The atmosphere was open and genuine — a space for dialogue and discovery.

We presented a clear solution that received great feedback, but it also brought new ideas and perspectives that will continue to shape how we build The Pending.

For us, it was a powerful reminder that progress comes from collaboration — and that technology only truly matters when it grows together with the community it serves.

Founder Tim Kriegler explains The Pending Portfolio & Agency. Credits: Pablo Wünsch Blanco

The Outcome

For bookers, it became a faster, clearer way to reconnect with artists they had seen live.

For artists, it transformed a single week of performing into ongoing visibility and real opportunities.

The pilot proved something important:

Structure doesn’t limit creativity — it sustains it.

When discovery and communication flow effortlessly, opportunities don’t end when the curtain closes —

✨ they begin there.

Learn more about Young Stage

Co-Founder Hubert Hofmannand the workshop participants. Credits: Pablo Wünsch Blanco