[Festivals Stories] World Roma festival Khamoro / Slovo 21

We are proud to have been able to realise the Festival Khamoro during the challenging, unstable, dynamic time and constantly changing environment - the Festival years of 2020 and 2021. We managed to adapt quickly to the situation and turned this difficult period into an opportunity to do things differently. Instead of producing the Festival as a one week long programme, we organised its activities throughout the whole year.We instensified co-operation with other (mainstream) festivals. By doing so it enabled us to present Roma emerging artists to the wider audience than usually - including the ones who would not normally visit Khamoro Festival from various reasons.

We organised some of the events in other parts of the Czech Republic outside the capital city: e.g. Rokycany, Náchod city, etc. Moreover, many events, which could not be open to the public (or were opened just for a limited number of visitors) were streamed online. Thanks to all these innovations Khamoro's events in 2020 were seen or visited by around 170 000 people from the Czech Republic and abroad (for comparison: the usual attendance before was around 10 000 visitors). We see this as a major success in presenting professional Roma culture to the general public. In the future we would definitely like to follow up on the opportunities and alternatives this challenging time brought and what it has taught us. At the same time, however, we are looking forward to being able to carry out events again in person (e.g. in combination with online streaming), as human contact and the experience of visiting events live is irreplaceable.

More information: http://www.slovo21.cz

(General Editor: Simon Mundy)