On the warm and pleasant night between 4th and 5th of July the official diaspora of Belarusians of Sweden for the first time in their history celebrated Kupal'le - Midsummer. The fest was attended by 35-40 participants of different folks: Belarusians, Ukrainans, Latvians, Estonians, Russians and of course Swedes. The fest lasted for 12 hours, from about 19:00 till the next morning.
This celebration was organized by me and three other active participants of Belarusian community here Sergei, Lesha and Alex (Alex is, besides, a boardmember of official community "Sveriges Belarusier"). At the beginning of this summer we were inspired by the Ukrainian community here and decided to organize special Belarusian events more often, at least twice a month. The first try was the evening of Belarusian board games, which had a success and interest not only from the side of Belarusians, but other folks here in Sweden. So then we decided to organize something "more serious".
We started to create a program of the event at the beginning of June, and focused on the aim to show as many ancient Belarusian Midsummer traditions, as we can, but to make the fest interesting to contemporary youth and grown-ups, and not only for the Belarusians, but for other folks also.
Still, to keep the atmosphere, that it is a Belarusian holiday, we have created playlist of appropriate folk, rock and medieval-style music, national clothes, ribbons with Belarusian ornaments. We also used some methods of non-formal education, that I have learned here at Framtidståget, to break the ice between our guests. And some of the Belarusian traditional Midsummer righuals has become the non-formal education methods, that are used now by Framtidståget on different projects, even in Morocco!
We made everything for the fest by ourselves, had not searched for any grants or sponsors. For sure, the event looked a bit amateur, but each of us worked hard and spent so much time and soul and energy, as he or she could. Nobody of us could even guess, how the holiday actually would be. And it was great! :)
This celebration was organized by me and three other active participants of Belarusian community here Sergei, Lesha and Alex (Alex is, besides, a boardmember of official community "Sveriges Belarusier"). At the beginning of this summer we were inspired by the Ukrainian community here and decided to organize special Belarusian events more often, at least twice a month. The first try was the evening of Belarusian board games, which had a success and interest not only from the side of Belarusians, but other folks here in Sweden. So then we decided to organize something "more serious".
Still, to keep the atmosphere, that it is a Belarusian holiday, we have created playlist of appropriate folk, rock and medieval-style music, national clothes, ribbons with Belarusian ornaments. We also used some methods of non-formal education, that I have learned here at Framtidståget, to break the ice between our guests. And some of the Belarusian traditional Midsummer righuals has become the non-formal education methods, that are used now by Framtidståget on different projects, even in Morocco!
We made everything for the fest by ourselves, had not searched for any grants or sponsors. For sure, the event looked a bit amateur, but each of us worked hard and spent so much time and soul and energy, as he or she could. Nobody of us could even guess, how the holiday actually would be. And it was great! :)
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