The UBC Cultural Prize 2011

The theme of the UBC Cultural Prize 2011 was "Building Bridges for the Baltic Future". 10 applications from Cēsis, Falun, Gdańsk, Jõhvi, Malbork, Rakvere, Słupsk, Turku, Visbyand Örebro were submitted.

Trying to make a decision, the board of the Commission referred to the UBC Bulletin headline "Building on the Past Heading for the Future". That is how the bridges for the Baltic future should be constructed -building on a solid knowledge of the past but having in mind a vision of the desired goal in the future.

With this in mind, the board discovered that one candidate was showing how to build the cultural activities very strongly on the past and in that way to have a great influence on cultural life, image and identity of the city. At the same time the board no­ticed that there was another candidate that was extremely strongly heading for the future as a voice of the present century.

The first one was the Mediaeval Week on Gotland. During the week the whole old town of Visby turns into a festival celebrating the mediaeval time, where the history turns real as visitors dress in authentic clothes and wear genuine equipment and acces­sories with the ruins, cobble stone streets and the town wall as a living background, lurid tournaments with horses and knights, fire shows, theatre and feasts with mediaeval themes, concerts with mediaeval music, market place with tools, food and in­struments, a large number of handicraft courses and a lot of lectures in history of this time, are spread all over the town and its surroundings during eight days every summer.

The other candidate was the Rakvere Punk Song Festival - Anarchy in EU! The song and dance festivals had helped the Estonians to preserve their own culture and identity under the fore ign rule. The Punk Song Festival of Rakvere is trying to combine the tra­ditional and the modern sides of Estonian culture: song festival and punk movement which also played a role in the struggle for independence. The initiative to organize a Punk Song Festival was politically, culturally and musically very risky. The choirs were asked to learn the world known punk classics in order to be able to participate in the festival. The idea turned into a success story with 2000 choir singers, including many choirs from abroad and 8000 spectators. This could be a starting point for development of a modern type of song festival based on long traditions with modern repertoire and innovative musical arrangements.

Thus, the UBC Cultural Prize 2011 was shared between the Mediaeval Week on Gotland and the Punk Song Festival in Rakvere.