The Street Musicians Festival Starts 1st September: Art and Entertainment at Petrovaradin’s Suburbium

The three-day long Street Musicians Festival will be held for the 16th time in Novi Sad (Petrovaradin) during the upcoming weekend, from Thursday 1st September until the evening hours on Saturday. Bringing the best street art performers from around the world to our country each year, this traditional cultural event will for the first time be held outside the city center, at a completely new location – the Suburbium of Petrovaradin Fortress, on the other side of the Danube.

This year, the Street Musicians Festival will welcome about 160 artists, musicians, dancers, actors, mimes, performers and conceptual artists, in an effort to accomplish the goals of the organizers and revive the rundown city quarter, turning it into an attractive environment for both living and working, as well as tourism. The participants of the Festival will arrive from USA, Brazil, Australia, Great Britain, Spain, Italy, France, Germany, Poland, Hungary, Romania, Slovenia, Croatia, Macedonia and Serbia.

The artistic program will be held at 14 festival points in total, which will be adapted to meet street art requirements – positioned at sidewalk level, since communication between artists and the audience is an essential part of these performances. The main stage will be situated in front of Belgrade Gate, while the other performance points will be located along Belgrade, Štrosmajer, and Lisinski Streets, Ramp Road at the entrance into Petrovaradin, at “Josif” Powder Mill, at the Army playground, as well as the Brod Theatre on the opposite bank of the Danube. Apart from all of this, visitors will also have a chance to take part in a walking tour of the Suburbium, organized by the Association “Scenatoria” from Petrovaradin, which is participating at the Festival with its great artistic project “Initiate Change, Be the Change!”, the main goal of which coincides with the idea of the Festival to renew this part of town.

The festival will open on 1st September, with a ceremonial citizen procession from Liberty Square, via Mihajlo Pupin Boulevard, across the bridge to Belgrade Gate, where they will be welcomed by the stars of the evening, New York’s jazz-pop sensation – Moon Hooch. The procession will be led by the visual artists on bicycles VJ Suave from Brazil, followed by Haos animators, the artistic troupe Sutton Beres Culler from USA, students from the Faculty of Technical Sciences, Department for Stage Design, members from the Ephemeral Society responsible for the concept of this year’s opening, around 200 cyclists from the Bicycle Initiative of Novi Sad, and over one thousand citizens of Novi Sad and their guests. The total number of visitors expected during the three days at this year’s Street Musicians Festival is around 50,000, which has become a regular figure for this event during the last couple of years. The entire program at the Festival will be free, while the streets in the Suburbium of Petrovaradin Fortress will be closed for traffic during the program. All visitors will also have the ability to reach the Festival location via buss, with a special festival buss line operating every half hour, from Liberty Square to the Suburbium.

The new addition to this year’s Street Musicians Festival will be the introduction of the open air cinema at “Josif” Powder Mill. During Friday and Saturday, visitors will have a chance to watch 6 featured films at the cinema, which has been organized in partnership with the Cinema City Film Festival. The regional symposium titled “Art in Public Space – The Use of Culture” will be held on Saturday from 10:00 (10 AM) to 18:00 (6 PM) at the Brod Theatre, participated by experts in this field from Zagreb, Rijeka, Ljubljana, Kotor, Sarajevo, Skopje, Belgrade and Novi Sad. The visitors of the Festival can also expect refreshments at the event, which will this year include the craft beers from four small local breweries.

The Street Musicians Festival is organized by the Art Association “Inbox” from Novi Sad, supported by the City of Novi Sad, Tourist Organization of Novi Sad and the Embassy of the United States of America in Belgrade, MTS, and Genrali Insurance Serbia.

Photo by: Saša Srećković