The Festival Readings took place from 28-30 June 2019 as a next step in the long term collaboration between Eleusis 2021 European Capital of Culture for regional and international capacity building of festival managers and cultural entrepreneurs. The Festival Readings followed an earlier tailor-made Atelier for Young Festival Managers in which 25 Greek Festival managers participated and out of which a Greek Festival Network was initiated as well as a toolkit on Greek festivals.
32 participants took part in the readings and together with experts as Tom Creed, Theatre and Opera Director, Festival curator and consultant (Ireland), Vallejo Gantner, Artistic and Executive Director of Onassis Foundation (US) and Monique Veaute, Chairman of the Fondazione Romaeuropa -arte e cultura (Italy) we discussed how to curate a festival, the relation with audiences and communities, financial, social and political challenges that influence the cultural field and how to build resilience through networks and civil society platforms. We went more in depth in the relevance and importance of networks today and different models of networks with Ása Richardsdóttir, Secretary General of IETM Network (Iceland), Inge Ceustermans, Managing Director of The Festival Academy (EFA) (Belgium), Mike Van Graan, Founding President of African Cultural Policy Network (South Africa) and the developments of the new Greek Festival Network.
Moreover we have been introduced to the artistic programme of Synikismos Festival,a contemporary performing arts festival. Through the 9-days long festival we had the opportunity to interact with the Asia Minor and Pakistan local communities, and also explore the work of international artists as Tania El Khoury or Greek artists as Yolanda Markopoulou that are actually focused on local communities and create site specific artworks that reflect on the identity of the city.
The next step in the capacity building trajectory between The Festival Academy and Eleusis 2021 is an Atelier for Greek Festival and Production Managers to take place in 2020 with an open call for people from Greece, Mena (Middle East & North Africa) and Balkan region.