UNESCO prize to the Førde Festival’s Talent project
Monday, March 14, 2011 at 12:27PM The “Talent 2008” project has received the UNESCO title "Young artist for intercultural dialogue Between the Arab and Western worlds." The title is an honor to young artists for their efforts to promote dialogue between Arab and Western culture.
The Talent project is a collaboration between The Førde Festival and the Concerts Norway with support from the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The project has been held every year since 1995. Each year, three musicians aged 18-25 from three countries (one of them is Norway) meet and live close to each other a week during the Førde Festival and create music together under the guidance of two artistic leaders. The year after, they meet again in one of the participating countries.
"It is a great pleasure for us that the Talent project from 2008 have been chosen out of getting such an important honor. This hits the core of our project! That is exactly what we want with it; to create meeting places across national and cultural borders", says the Førde festival’s artistic director, Hilde Bjørkum and Concerts Norway’s project leader Anne Moberg.
Innovative project
In the motivation for the price, Unesco says that the Talent 2008 is an innovative project and an example of excellent work to increase public understanding and cultural exchange through music: "This distinction honors your outstanding endeavour's to further mutual understanding and cultural exchange through music, as demonstrated by your innovative project."
In 2008, the participants in the Talent project came from Egypt, Palestine and Norway. The young musicians met both at the Førde Festival and the following year in Egypt.
A great honor
One of the young musicians from Norway, singer Ingebjørg Harman Bratland is excited over the prize:
" This is a great honor! It's quite a title we can adorn ourselves with! We had a fantastic, successful cooperation with young people from Palestine and Egypt. I have many fond memories of this cooperation. I even have one of the songs we recorded in Cairo out on myspace my page, and it has about 20 000 playback! This suggests that other think our cooperation is successful", says Bratland.
The UNESCO title will be awarded at the Unesco headquarters in Paris on April 13, 2011
More info: info@fordefestival.no / www.fordefestival.no