Curtains up on alternative programmes

Claudia Druwé -
17 Apr 2020

The quarantine continues, but the festivals on FestivalFinder.eu have not been standing still. We recently shared a list of festivals in March and April that have been postponed or cancelled due to covid-19, but that doesn’t mean that arts and culture have been cancelled as well. Here are five festivals who have found different ways of providing their audiences with content, while respecting social distancing measures.

This Italian choral festival usually takes place in April (this year from 16 till 25 April) and is aimed at young people from ages 6 to 19. Since 2002, the Festival di Primavera (literally "spring festival") is the main event for children's and youth choirs in Italy with three thousand participants per year. The festival includes workshops on specific repertoire, internationally renowned lecturers, concerts, round tables and moments of leisure and friendship.

The festival has started doing daily Rewinds on Facebook, during which they share a video from a Italian choir performance, thus encouraging choir singers to stay and sing at home. The performances are great and definitely deserve a listen!

The Spanish Flic Festival of Literature and Arts for Children and Young People is an annual festival that promotes the crossover of art and creation with literature in order to encourage reading among children and the young. By promoting enjoyable literary experiences, the festival hopes to inspire new generations of readers and in doing so it addresses different groups: children, young people, families, schools and professionals.

This year’s festival started on 27 January and was supposed to finish on 30 April. Suspended since 13 March, this festival offers a radio programme on their website with daily stories, a podcast-style programme about literature and a programme in which children review the festival and its activities.

Mladí Ladí Jazz is an international festival of contemporary and experimental jazz organized mostly in Prague but also in selected cities throughout the Czech Republic. As well as concerts, it holds the Jazzfruit competition for young jazz bands, the unique jazz workshops for children and specialist workshops for both professional and amateur musicians led by well-respected foreign lecturers or the year-round club series Jazzbit.

Supposed to run from 5 till 30 April, this festival made sure its audience doesn’t run out of nice jazz music, by creating a Stay Home Spotify Playlist. If you can’t get enough of jazz, the festival also has a Spotify profile with more playlists.

The San Patrizio Livorno Festival #SPLF celebrates Irish culture in Italy and the cultural relationship between the two countries. The physical festival, which usually takes place in Livorno, Italy, has been cancelled (20-22 March 2020), but a virtual edition is born on the festival’s Youtube channel.

Trento Film Festival was founded in 1952 on the initiative of Club Alpino Italiano and the Municipality of Trento. It was the first film festival in the world documenting, analysing, developing and promoting themes linked to the mountains, climbing, exploration and adventure. Every spring the best global works in the fields of mountain literature and film, along with numerous important figures in the world of climbing and exploration, come together in Trento.

The festival, which was supposed to start on 25 April, has started the hashtag #Casabase on Facebook, sharing movie recommendations every day while waiting for the 68 edition of the festival.