Big Music for Small Cities project unites art festivals

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Big Music for Small Cities' discussion panel

The project “Big Music for Small Cities” starts working on strengthening the festival network in the border areas.

To accomplish this task, on August 12-13, 2020, the discussion panel “Art festivals in the border areas. Best practices and development strategies” will take place.

During the panel online connection will be used for the joint work of two groups in Petrozavodsk and Joensuu with simultaneous translation. The event will be moderated by the best festival experts from Russia and Finland.

Dmitry Grinchenko (Moscow), Director General of the Russian Concert Agency, will be the Russian expert.  Russian Concert Agency is a production company that holds major events in the field of art and academic music both in Russia and abroad. 

Under the leadership of the creative union of the world-famous musician Yuri Bashmet and Dmitry Grinchenko, the Winter International Art Festival has been successfully held in Sochi for 13 years. It is one of the best examples of the annual cultural project of a European scale in Russia.

The Finnish project partner has invited as the expert Kai Amberla (Helsinki), the Executive Director of Finland Festivals. Finland Festivals is the forum for cooperation between Finland’s leading cultural events and almost a hundred related events. In addition to the work with Finnish Festivals, Kai Amberla is also a consultant for a number of music foundations and organizations.

The key participants in the panel will be representatives of art festivals on both sides of the border. They will talk about their work on improving the tourist attractiveness of the region, developing small territories, supporting young talents and synthesizing festival and sociocultural work.

Together with the experts from Moscow and Helsinki the participants will discuss key issues in the field of festival activity development through the examples of the festivals operating in the Republic of Karelia and North Karelia. The panel will become a meeting platform to discuss art festivals in the context of the territory development, interaction with the local community, youth support, the implementation of the social mission, and opportunities for cooperation with each other.

The panel is aimed at establishing contacts between festivals of the Republic of Karelia and the Finnish region of North Karelia. A discussion of these issues will help participants to formulate basic principles for creating a strategy for festival development in the border areas.