Festival Tour & Storytelling Camp 2004
24.06 – 06.07 2004
15 participants from Balkan & 7 from Denmark participated on the workcamp at Roskilde Festival.
What they planned to do?
Aim of the project:
First of all the aim of the project is to establish culture meetings between youngsters of the Balkans and Western, mainly Scandinavian, festival guests.
The culture meeting will take place at Roskilde Festival 2004 because we regard the festival as having unique conditions for creating successful encounters crossing borders and cultures: The artists, organizers and guests of the festival are gathered on a common passion for music and they all carry the same muddy uniform. But their personal background and stories are different. We think that the similarities and differences in between the many, international festival guests are particularly interesting when the culture meeting is between youth of countries with such different conditions as e.g. the Scandinavian countries and the ex-Yugoslavian ones.
Since the end of the wars these countries have faced great political and social challenges, and cultural life is having a hard time under these circumstances. Therefore another of our aims is to strengthen the cultural life in general in the Balkan region.
There does, however, exist a vivid underground culture of painting, body art, design, photography, film production and other sorts of art in the region. The young people urge to express themselves and to tell theirs often, incredible stories. This potential of creative communication we believe we can strengthen and use in our vision to create a mobile beauty saloon on the festival. Here the idea is, that Balkan and Western youngsters will meet each other in the ”room of speech” that is often established when you visit a hairdresser.
A third aim is the obvious to make it possible for 15 young people from the Balkans to experience a magnificent and well functioning event as the Roskilde Festival. The Balkans have festivals of course, but in a smaller scale, and our hope is to inspire possible participants of the festival business to develop and strengthen the music scene in their country and maybe create the foundation for increased cooperation with the Danish Festival in the future.
Work/study:
Your job is in two large groups of 7 or 8 ”hairdressers” and 3-4 of the Danish coordinators ors to go out on the festival-area and find, attract and treat the “customers”. A treatment could mean: doing the customers hair, colouring a lock of hair blue, putting on make-up, or making a fake tattoo, perform body paint, or give the customer massage or a cream treatment of the face. Or it could be simply washing hair (which could be very attractive for the guests after a few days on festival).
The job as a “hairdresser” is the way to perform your primer job, which is to be a “storyteller” communicating your own culture and everyday life to the curious festival guests who dare to put themselves under your beauty-treatment. As a participant you will work 5-6 hours a day in 7 days during the festival.
And they really did it!
