Eurocultured

SPEARFISH WAS LAUNCHED 7 YEARS AGO. THE PURPOSE OF THE COPMPANY WAS TO DELIVER CULTURAL EVENTS IN UNCONVENTIONAL SPACES. THEY FELT THAT ART GALLERIES AND THEATRES WERE NOT VERY INCLUSIVE AND SO TRIED TO TAKE LIVE ART AND DANCE EVENTS, IN PARTICULAR, OUT OF THESE SPACES AND ONTO THE STREETS…

PULP took aside Ben Reed from the collective to talk about their annual event, Eurocultured.

Firstly can you tell us a bit about Spearfish?
We like underground culture. It excites us because it is fresh and there are fewer rules. We started delivering events that featured live graffiti shows and exhibitions of the artform, breakdance events, street sports events and club events with DJs, MCs and all of the above.

Off the back of these events we were approached by local authorities and asked if we could teach young people. As a result we have now delivered 100′s of workshops in music, visual art, fashion and street sports.

What is Eurocultured?
Eurocultured brings both parts of our work together – a high quality public access culture event that offers free workshops for young people.

It is series of street festivals that take place in different cities each year as a means of celebrating the diversity, and also the similarities, of European culture via live art, dance, performance and music.

This will be the sixth Eurocultured Street Festival in Manchester. We expect up to 15,000 to attend this year. Over 300 artists from 14 different countries will come to city to perform live. We have live street art and graffiti, bands, DJs, dance showcases, installation and a food, drink and fashion market.

We close off 2 streets underneath Oxford Road train station and programme content onto stages and in the 5 surrounding venues. The daytime event runs from 2pm till 9pm on Sunday 24th and Monday 25th May and on the Sunday evening we run Eurocultured After/Hours – a club event in which we work with top promoters to programme DJs, live bands, cabaret and performance into surrounding venues. One wristband allows you unlimited access to all the venues.

Why did Spearfish decide to put on the festival?
We launched the event in May 2004, this was the year the EU welcomed 10 new member states and the landscape of the Union changed forever.

We thought it would be nice to an event that celebrated this enlargement.

Can you explain the union with Bratislava and Dublin and how the three sibling festivals operate?

There is no real link, however we have applied to the EU for some funding so that we can introduce a residency programme that would allow artists from these different cities to spend time together and create brand new collaborative work.

We were approached by Dublin City Council to do an event in the city and we felt that Eurocultured would work well at the Smithfield site they wanted us to use. The festivals take place on different dates and have different line ups, some of the same acts do perform at each one however.

Bratislava came about because of one of the guys working on the event was from there and he suggested we applied to the Visegrad Fund for some financial support to do an event. We got the grant and the inaugural Eurocultured Bratislava was born.

This year we will be doing Eurocultured Belfast on July 18th and we are in talks with Glasgow, Lisbon and the Canary Isles.

Eurocultured debuted in 2004. Was it fraught with ‘teething problems’ or a relatively straightforward affair?
Whenever you do an event in a new space there are always new things that keep you on your toes. The team at Spearfish have delivered large events before, such as the Totally Board ski and snowboard event in Castlefield, so this was relatively small in comparison.

How has the festival since developed?
In the first year we only had 3 venues and one street, now the event has 2 outdoor stages, 6 venues and 3 streets that we need to close off.

In the first year we had fewer than 5,000 people now we get over 15,000 over the 2 days.

This year we are also introducing a residency programme; the week before the event we have 6 artists: 2 street artists, a dancer, a digital artist, a DJ and an accordion player. They will be working collaboratively to create brand new work that will be showcased in the city and at the festival – expect to see 3 world premieres of experimental work.

What have been some of your personal highlights?
The first year when people actually started to turn up! You never know it’s going to work, when people turned up in numbers you feel a mixture of emotions that include relief, euphoria and pride.

Another highlight was seeing the whole 4000-strong crowd drop to their knees and then jump up in unison to the sounds of Buraka Som Sistema on the main stage.

…Any lows?
The weather…..the last 2 years in Manchester have been grey and cold and last year in Dublin was a complete wash out. You put so much time and effort into the planning and then the weather decides to spoil the party.

We are due blues skies and sunshine this year.

What can we expect from this year’s event?
This year’s headline act is Nouvelle Vague, local heroes Riot Jazz feat Broken’n'£nglish, Polish nu folk sensation Village Kolektiv perform a Manchester debut, Fotos (Germany), Jennifer Gentle (Italy), the highly rated Hjaltalin (Iceland) perform live, Alina Orlova (Lithuania), Two Wheel Bycicle Club from Northern Ireland and we have top UK acts: Post War Years, Everything Everything, William, The Tunics and many many more.

Live art comes from Sat One (Germany), Mr Kern (France), Mr Jago, Ponk, Paris, Guy McKinley, Dreph, Ruse and Elph from the UK, as well as a world premier of the interactive ‘Empty Stomach’ inflatable installation by Merja Puustinen and Andy Best (Finland).

Dance showcases from the UK, Sweden and Slovakia in dance forms including street dance, breakdance, Circassian folk and flamenco.

The Afterhours event includes venues hosted Contort Yourself, Hit and Run vs Drum Music, Roots Before Branches, Friends of Mine, Whim Wham Club and Balkaneasca. We have Raw Fusion Sound System (Sweden), Top Bill’, Rico Tubbs, Clouds (Finland), Zero DB (Spain) Gig Barocco (Italy) and loads more.

How do you compile each year’s line-ups? Can anyone become involved?
A lot of it depends on where we get the funding from, i.e. if the Swedish Embassy gives us funding then we program Swedish acts. We also identify people we think are doing some interesting work and target them.

We also keep slots aside for local acts; we feel it is important for everyone to get a chance to play and so we get a lot of enquiries via myspace etc and we try and accommodate everyone.

Finally, if you could sum up Eurocultured in a sentence:
A kaleidoscope of different art forms in a street festival format with lots of cover from the rain, some big names and many that will be the next big thing.

Thanks for your time Ben.

For more information visit: www.eurocultured.com

Words: Holly Dicker