Brave Festival is a unique, annual artistic event devoted to the presentation of various cultures and traditions from all over the world, particularly those that are rare, marginalised or almost extinct
The event is an annual festival about brave people: people who speak about where they come from, what their values are and what their tradition and spirituality is.
This is a festival that addresses the problems of dying tradition, forgotten identity and spirituality; ancient cultures, cultural minorities and values left behind, turned down, sold or destroyed. This is also a festival of people who do not accept the models promoted by mass culture, but keep cultivating their own – often forlorn and vanishing –traditions and individual sensitivity.
Each edition of the festival, consisting of performances, concerts, film screenings and workshops, focuses on a different aspect of humanity and art or a region of the world. The previous editions were entitled: "Magic Voices", "Asian Voices", "Drowned Songs", "Rituals: Out of Africa", "Prayers of the World" and "The Enchanters".
Artists either come from forgotten places or represent vanishing and marginalized cultures. So far the Brave festival has hosted artists from, among others, Tanzania, Chile, Burkina Faso, Australia, Mali, Georgia, Bulgaria, Niger, Israel, Egypt, Macedonia, Morocco, Korea, Russia, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Uganda, Taiwan, Zanzibar, Ukraine and Poland. A significant aspect of the festival includes meetings with artists, who share - through direct contact - their experience of the effort to preserve culture and tradition.
The first edition of the festival took place in 2005. 2011’s Brave Festival entitled "Masks" was held in July. From July 2-8th the focus was on the significance of the mask in rituals and ceremonies, as well as the arts in general.
An important parallel project of the Brave Festival is Brave Kids. The aim of Brave Kids is to showcase unique, artistic groups of children who come from regions afflicted by tragic social and historical circumstances - natural disasters, political conflicts, homelessness and poverty - as well as to foster the belief that art offers the possibility of overcoming traumatic events and freeing oneself from destructive limitations.
Attempting to understand distant traditions are not the only ways to preserve culture: another is charity. The revenues from Brave festival ticket sales support the activities of Rokpa International, an organization running educational and cultural projects all over the world. The aim of Rokpa is to raise children who are aware of their identity from their yearly years till adulthood. This is how we want to save cultures, traditions and languages in a very practical and tangible way.
Organiser: Song of the Goat
www.bravefestival.pl
This event is part of the Attention Culture!, the Cultural Programme of the 2011 Polish EU Presidency
Source: Adam Mickiewicz Institute, press materials