Dancers on the Europeade 2015 in Helsingborg.Folkdance at Henry Dunkers Plats in Helsingborg 2015.Europeade 2008 at Martigny, SwitzerlandEuropeade 2011 event in Tartu festival arena (laululava) in Tartu, Estonia.
Europeade is the largest festival of European folk culture, held in a different European country each year. The last Europeade was held in Turku, Finland in 2017.[1] The year before that it was held in Namur, Belgium in 2016.[2]
The first Europeade was held in 1964 at the initiative of Mon de Clopper (1922–1998) from Flanders and Robert Müller-Kox, a German exiled from the Province of Silesia. Mon de Clopper was president of the Europeade until 1997, when he was succeeded by the current president Bruno Peeters (born 1939), also from Flanders.
The goal of the Europeade is to foster a united Europe, where everyone contributes and develops his or her own culture, respecting everyone else. This philosophy is practised each year during the five-day festival, when thousands of people from all parts of Europe, dressed in their traditional costumes, meet to sing, to make music, to dance and to celebrate - without formal lecturing.
In a typical Europeade there are about five thousand participants, all in costume, in almost two hundred groups, from about twenty-two countries. They all pay their own transport costs, and perform free of charge. Participants arrive during the Wednesday, and are accommodated in large premises wherever possible, typically in large schools, with basic beds supplied in the class-rooms, and using other school amenities. Large-scale catering is provided, usually a simple breakfast, a packed lunch and a hot evening meal in one central location. Groups perform in a number of large concerts, in designated street locations, and take part in a massed parade through the town and in a major Saturday evening Europeade Ball. Outside the actual events many groups will sing, play and dance wherever they happen to find themselves, including the premises where they are lodged. After the Sunday afternoon Closing Concert - typically ninety groups performing - groups are free to make their way home, but accommodation continues until after breakfast on the Monday morning.
2004 Riga, Latvia. A monument in Riga commemorates this Europeade. It was donated by cities that hosted the Europeade before, on the occasion of the first Europeade in the Baltic States and in a former Soviet republic. It took place from 21 July – 25 July, and it was the first biggest and most significant cultural event since the state of Latvia joined the European Union, thus becoming a landmark in the history of creating a common cultural environment. More than 4000 participants from 38 European countries and regions gathered in Riga for one of the largest European folk culture forums.
