KHAMORO World Roma Festival and Prague Spring classical music festival given the EFFE Label

The KHAMORO World Roma Festival and the Prague Spring classical music festival have been awarded an EFFE Label by an international jury that assesses European festivals fulfilling criteria of a very high standard. The International Jury chaired by Sir Jonathan Mills, former director of the Edinburgh International Festival, also selected five of the most trend-setting European festivals from the pool of 705 recognized with the EFFE Label 2019-2020 for the EFFE Award. 

The EFFE Award winners (in alphabetical order) are:

• Conrad Festival, Krakow - Poland
• Festival Deltebre Dansa, Deltebre - Spain
• Førde Traditional and World Music Festival, Førde - Norway
• GogolFEST - Multidisciplinary International Festival of Contemporary Art, various cities - Ukraine
• Welcome to The Village, Leeuwarden – The Netherlands

The gala ceremony celebrating the EFFE Label 2019-2020 was held on 26 September at the famous Bozar Centre for Fine Arts in Brussels. Media representatives of KHAMORO and Prague Spring informed the Czech News Agency of their participation.

"The EFFE Label is an enormous appreciation of our work and it is a great honor for us to have received it. One of the criteria for being given the EFFE Label is support for intercultural dialogue, and that is exactly the main effect of the KHAMORO festival, which we have been organizing for 21 years," said festival director Jelena Silajdžič.

Festivals that celebrate a varied range of art forms, from classical music to film, modern opera, folk music and contemporary dance are eligible for the EFFE Label. Their common denominator is the fact that they achieve the highest artistic level in their fields, introduce new dramaturgical horizons, and significantly contribute to the development of the domestic arts scene and its collaboration with partners abroad.

"We greatly appreciate this recognition, thanks to which we are in the same prestigious society as, for example, the famous BBC Proms festival in London, with whom we share a colorful dramaturgical vision," said Roman Bělor, director of Prague Spring. Along with other Czech festivals, both KHAMORO and Prague Spring received the official EFFE Label on 29 September at the Opero center in Prague.

The EFFE gala evening in Prague was organized by Culture Matters and Soundsgate, featuring many audiovisual and musical performances. Previous recipients of the EFFE Label certificate in the Czech Republic have been the multi-genre Mezi ploty (Between the Fences) festival, the Palm Off Fest of Central European Theater Companies at Prague's Divadlo pod Palmovkou theater, and the five-day festival of professional puppet ensembles, Mateřinka.