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08 - 28/06/2015

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Malta Festival Poznań is one of twelve in Europe and the only festival from Poland to receive the EFFE Award for the most trend-setting festivals. ‘The jury considered this to be the most innovative festival in Poland: having begun as a theatre festival, five years ago it began inviting leading artists to curate specific programmes around a particular theme or idea.’, says Vincent Baudriller, the chairman of the international jury, the director of Théâtre Vidy in Lausanne and the ex-director of Festival d'Avignon, when he presented the award to the director of Malta Festival Poznań, Michał Merczyński, in Paris.

The international jury selected from among 760 major European festivals from 31 countries, which received the Europe for Festivals, Festivals for Europe Label 2015-2016 (EFFE Label). The festivals awarded with the label became members of the first edition of the EFFE platform, a program of the European Commission, initiated by the European Festivals Association. Festivals have to meet the program criteria: devotion to art, social engagement as well as international and global outlook. The EFFE Label was awarded to 29 festivals from Poland including Wratislavia Cantans, Camerimage or Ludwig van Beethoven Easter Festival.

The EFFE Awards ceremony took place on 27 September during the meeting of 250 festival representatives, artists, journalists from all over Europe and representatives of the European Commission and European Parliament, hosted by the Parisian Festival d'Automne, Théâtre de la Ville and Google Cultural Institute. The list of the twelve European festivals, which were considered the most innovative, apart from Malta Festival Poznań, featured Ars Electronica from Linz, SICK! from Brighton/Manchester, Manifesta from Amsterdam, Festival d’Aix-en-Provence, Santarcangelo Festival Internazionale del teatro in Piazza and Prague Quadrennial of Performance Design and Space. In the justification for the granting of the award Malta Festival Poznań has been described as a festival: ‘presenting some of the most interesting contemporary culture phenomena from all over the world, co-producing theatre shows and initiating performing arts, musical and community art projects.’.

EFFE Awards 2015-2016 are the first ones to be presented under the auspices of the European Commission. The eight-person jury of the European Association of Festivals featured figures such as: Hortense Archambault – the director of MC93 Maison de la culture de la Seine-Saint-Denis in Bobigny and the ex-director of Festival d'Avignon, Piotr Gruszczyński – the critic and dramaturge at Nowy Teatr in Warsaw, or Mark Russell – the Founder and Co-Director of Public Theater’s Under the Radar Festival in New York.

We wish to express our joy and thanks for the prize!

A full list of the awarded festivals and the members of the jury of EFFE Award can be found on: www.effe.eu.

photo: press materials EFFE – Europe for Festivals, Festivals for Europe