Festival Lent among EU's best!
This year for the first time, Festival Lent received co-financing from EU as one of the best festivals on a trans-European scale. The programme had a budget of € 1.5 billion and individual festivals were awarded maximum € 100,000.
Long awaited results were published almost 5 months after the deadline for submission of applications and among 274 applicants, 14 festivals that impressed the judges were selected. This year, the limit for co-financing was 97.5 points, which assures the quality of selected applicants.
With its concept and programme, Festival Lent swept away the competition and was awarded all points (100 out of 100). Therefore, Festival Lent will receive co-financing of € 100.000, which is the highest amount received.
Festival Lent won over the judges with:
- Very wide cultural and geographical diversity, bringing artists all over Europe to Slovenia.
- The new horizontal festival concept of the festival, introduced in 2011, which is in the year of Maribor European Cultural Capital project (ECoC) – comparing different cultures, music, dancing and theatre styles/genres.
- The »feeling« of Europe in interaction with Balkan, Africa, Asia, North & South America, Australia.
- A long list of European non-national works already signed for the festival.
- The main focus: presentation of the Balkan cultures compared/intertwined with the cultures of Central Europe.
- The sustainable approach in which high quality culture is accessible to the widest public possible to the most affordable price. Culture is seen as a means to overcome social discrimination & exclusion.
- The concept of festivaLENTing (lentanje) – a common denominator of all activities and happenings on the festival, emphasized in the communication activities.
- Events are taking place in the whole town.
- Positive development of daily programs for children, along with active involvement of the families.
- The new concept of festival nutrition: the Street Food Festival SladoLENT.
- Well planned, bilingual communication.
- The festival is happening in the open spaces and has turned a lot of neglected areas into festival venues.
- A lot of internationally mixed groups performing.
- Well planned cooperation with the older audience in the European year of Active Ageing and Solidarity between Generations.
- Arts4all conference where among other activities the presentation of EcoC programs of Maribor, Guimaraes, Marseille, Košice will take place.
- Exchanging artists with other festivals.
Because the 20th edition of the festival received such a convincing confirmation from the EU institutions, Festival Lent will hopefully also on a local level gain recognition as a unique cultural event on an international scale.
