NordicBaltic Festival Platform

Already in 2011 the work started, with what in 2013 resulted in NordicBaltic Platform - a cooperation between festivals in Northern Scandinavia and the Baltics. Once a year the network gets together in a conference which alter it´s destination between the different members countries. Please see program and documentation from the conferences below. 

• 2018: Gdansk, Poland: Details and program from the conference >>>

• 2017: Helsingborg / Helsingor: Details and program from the conference >>>

• 2016: Vilnius, Lithuania: Details and program from the conference >>>

• 2015: Stockholm, Sweden: Details and program from the conference >>>

Read more about the NordicBaltic Festival Platform at nordicbalticfestivals.org

The NordicBaltic Festival Platform work as follows

1. to explore the NordicBaltic identity through art and to market and channel the conception through our festivals

2. find practical ways to encourage strategies for collaborative projects s.a. forming new partnerships

3. increase funding possibilties for festivals to realize their goals, and

4. look for financial means to sustain the platform, its working group, a project manager and an annual workshop/fair/seminar.

Background

A number of Nordic and Baltic festival colleagues, following an initiative from Swedish Music Festivals (now Sweden Festivals), agreed to organise a conference in Iceland, 5-7 October 2011. It was made possible by support from The Nordic Culture Fund. The meeting took place in connection to the annual Nordic Music Days, and the opening of the new concert Hall Harpa in Reykjavik. 45 representatives of festivals in Iceland, the Faeroe Islands, Greenland, Norway, Denmark, Finland, Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia and Sweden attended. Keynote speaker was Franz Patay, CEO of the Vienna Mozart Year 2006. All participants gave a short presentation on the situation of culture, the arts, and festivals in their respective countries, followed by a debate on how Nordic-Baltic cooperation might be structured.

The conference resulted in a press release, a decision to work towards strengthening a possible international festival network, and an agreement to try and arrange a new meeting to further investigate concrete ways of collaboration.

In conjunction with the Nordic Music Days in Stockholm 2012, Swedish Music Festivals - supported by Nordic Culture Fund and Music Development and Heritage Sweden -  organized a follow-up meeting to the one in Reykjavik. The meeting took place in Stockholm 12-14 October 2012. 27 delegates from festivals in the Faroe Islands, Norway, Iceland, Finland, Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia and Sweden attended. On Saturday morning Lluis Bonet from the University of Barcelona, msde the first presentation of FESTudy; the study of European festival that involved some 400 musicfestivals during 2011 and 2012. The study was later presented and published at a symposium in Lille, France, in November 2013.

At the invitation of Latvian Concerts, Riga Festival and in conjunction with Classical NordicBaltic 2013, Nordic and Baltic festivals organized a 3rd meeting in Riga on 19 February. A platform was formed, and the working group was given the mandate to run the work. In June 2013 the working group met with the  Nordic Council of Ministers in Copenhagen; to inform them about the platform and hear their views and advice.

The 4th meeting of the NordicBaltic Festival Platform was held in the European Cultural Capital of Riga on 4 March 2014. It was done in conjunction with Latvian Concerts and Classical NordicBaltic organized for the second time from 5-6 March and again supported by the Nordic Culture Fund. All attendents of the two events was invited to take part in the ceremony of the Great Latvian Award that celebrated its 20th anniversary.