12 culture news headlines from 6 countries in April
Armenia
Music festival “Yerevan perspectives” celebrates 15th anniversary, Sona Hovhannisyan, director of the festival told Armenpress, announcing the concert of Estonia’s Men Choir to be conducted in Yerevan on 24 April within the festival. The Choir would also give another concert to commemorate the Armenian Genocide. Besides, Nigel Kennedy, a British violinist, The King’s singers, a British a cappella vocal ensemble, and The Hagen Quartet, an Austrian string quartet, are invited to the festival. On top of this, the organisers continue negotiations with London symphonic orchestra. Armenpress, Newsarmenia
Azerbaijan
Culture workers of Armenia and Azerbaijan called for cease-fire. Sputnik.az quotes Armenian and Azerbaijani cultural workers calling on both conflicting sides in Nagorno-Karabakh to cease-fire. Araik Babajanyan, an Armenia actor, urged both sides to simultaneously made first step to each other. Eldar Gasimov, an Azerbaijani singer who won Eurovision Song Contest in 2012, underlined that all conflicts in the modern world should be solved through negotiations. Sputnik.az
Culture minister: the number of tourists in Azerbaijan increased five-fold. Speaking at opening of AITF 2016 exhibition dedicated to tourism and travel, Abulfaz Garayev, Azerbaijan’s minister of culture and tourism, underlined that for the last ten years the number of tourists visiting Azerbaijan increased five times. The exhibition was also visited by the country’s President Ilham Aliyev and his wife Mehriban Aliyeva. Moscow-Baku.ru
Belarus
Belarus and Hungary to sign cooperation programme in culture. Respective agreement was reached at the meeting between Alexander Khainovskyi, Belarus ambassador to Budapest, and Görgei Prole, deputy state secretary of Hungary’s ministry of human capacities, Belarus Segodnia reported. The cooperation programme would list culture events to be conducted in both countries. In 2014 both countries signed cooperation programme in education leading to increased number of student exchanges. Belarus Segodnia
Belarus culture days will be conducted in Israel next year. In 2017 Ashdod, Israel’s sixth-largest city, will host Belarus culture days. The event will also include commemoration of Janka Kupala, Belarus poet considered to be one of the greatest Belarus-language writer of the 20th century. The culture days will honour 135 anniversary of Janka Kupala’s birthday. Belta.by
Georgia
Government launched Check in Georgia programme to attract tourists. Mikheil Giorgadze, Georgia’s minister of culture, announced Check in Georgia project aimed at attracting tourists. During the next three months, the government plans holding concerts of Eros Ramazzotti (24 April), Robbie Williams (27 May), Maroon 5 (7 June) and Jose Carreras (18 June) in the framework of the project, the minister said. He also underlined that the project will bring together all traditional musical events taken place in Georgia under state financing. More than 150 concerts are planned to be held across the country. In addition to music festivals, mass events will be held dedicated to wine, cheese, honey and other products. The project’s general budget is 29 million of Georgian lari, the minister noted, stressing that it is unprecedented project by duration and scale. Business week Caucasus, Aspny.ge
Moldova
Moldova declared 2016 to be year of Mihai Grecu to honour 100 anniversary of his birthday, NewsMaker reported. Mihai Grecu, a famous Moldovan painter and a co-founder of Moldova’s National School of Painting. His impressive amount of works and exhibitions were marked by the negative impact of political factors present at the USSR, ministry of culture said, adding that the artist’s works provoked turbulent disputes and ideological conflicts. Under conditions of the Soviet oppress system, Grecu combined traditional folk motives with innovative contemporary painting of his time, the ministry concluded. NewsMaker
Ukraine
Ukraine and Lithuania to deep culture cooperation. Culture officials of Ukraine and Lithuania agreed to deeper culture cooperation between the two counties. They opened bilateral culture event “Lithuania-Ukraine: Culture Partnership 2016” conducted under the patronage of Ukraine’s and Lithuania’s culture ministers. The event is coordinated by Lithuanian Institute of Culture and includes several performances to take place in 2016 in Ukraine. Uryadovyi Portal
New Ukraine’s PM promised to personally manage culture issues. LB.ua quotes Volodymyr Groysman, Ukraine’s new Prime Minister, saying that he personally would manage culture-related issues. Culture is a basic thing that lays at the foundation of our faith in our own strength and forms sense of solidarity. The priority tasks of the culture ministry should be production, preservation and dissemination of Ukrainian culture products as well as increase demand on them. Revival of Ukrainian language is yet another priority, the PM added. LB.ua
Yevhen Nyshchuk became Ukraine’s new minister of culture. The outgoing minister Vyacheslav Kyrylenko remained Vice-Prime minister in the new Cabinet. Nyshchuk, who has already served as culture minister in 2014, underlined culture development as his priority. “I plan to immediately split the ministry’s functions. Alongside technical tasks such as distribution of funds, I will create a new department responsible for culture development,” the minister underlined. tv.ua
Kyiv traditionally hosted French Spring opened by light performance. Annual festival French Spring took place in Kyiv in first half of April. The festival was opened by light performance showed on the facade of the Ukrainian House at the European Square. AiF.ua
Director of Goethe-Institute Finland elaborates on culture leadership. In the framework of EaP Culture and Creativity Programme, Miiko Fritze, Director of Goethe-Institute Finland, gave a workshop on culture leadership for managers of culture institutions and programmes. Fritze shared his personal principles of leadership he is following, namely: trust, transparency, sharing, empathy, risk-acceptance and curiosity. Besides him, Tim Williams, Head of Culture and Creativity Programme, and Ihor Solodov, business-trainer, put emphasis on the roots of leadership, underlined differences between leadership in culture and other spheres as well as hinted on how to build up interaction between cultural actors/leaders and authorities. Culturepartnership.eu
