Date: 12th of January Location: Basel, Switzerland Description: A new ritual, the “Bärentag” (Feast of the Bear) was founded in 1998 in Basel (Switzerland). This happened in the context of the medieval, but still nowadays very popular feast of “Vogel Gryff” (grifin). In contrast to the traditional feast characterized byContinue Reading

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Name of Event: “Vynášení Morany” [Disposing of Morana] (Morana/Mařena/Mařana = female personification of Winter) Location: Prague Date: fifth Sunday of the Lent Period (also designated as “Deathly Sunday”), typically the end of March Description: Disposing of Morana is a revival of a Slavic folk-tradition of discarding the personification of WinterContinue Reading

Location: Wittenberg, Germany Date: June Description: Luther’s Wedding is a large scale, public festival, inaugurated in 1994, driven in part by efforts to deal with economic and social problems arising from German reunification in 1989. Since then, Wittenberg has turned to developing its considerable cultural resources into tourism capital and receivesContinue Reading

Olga Cieslarova has played a key role in the creation and development of Prague’s Velvet Carnival, which grew part out of her doctoral research on Basel’s Fasnacht. This interview is from Swiss radio SRF, from 2013.

Date: May, every two years Location: Brussels, Belgium Description: Zinneke is a living city project that creates opportunities for meeting, collaboration, cooperation and creation and it also generates an artistic and social dynamic between residents, associations, schools and artists from different districts in Brussels and elsewhere. All the artictic projectContinue Reading