NEWS |
YOUROPE – THE EUROPEAN FESTIVAL ASSOCIATION  Yourope, the European Festival Association was founded in November 1998 and is the present more active than ever. The association currently has 56 members, which contains the most well established festivals in Europe. New members like Le Printemps de Bourges in France, Wilsonic in Slovakia or the Westpop in the Netherlands recently joined the association. All Yourope members are dedicated to improve the European festival scene in terms of working conditions, health and safety issues and environmental awareness. Also in promoting the cross-border exchange of live music talent. The overall aim of the association is to collaborate and share experience with all european areas which could benefit from a joint approach. Yourope was founding partner of the European Talent Exchange Programm (www.etep.nl) and the European Live Music Forum (www.elmf.eu). From 2006-2009, Yourope, in cooperation with the ILMC Safety Focus Group, organised seven health & safety seminars for festival security staff from all over Europe. A next seminar will take place in autumn 2009 besides various other activities. From 2009 onwards, the group will be named Yourope Safety Focus Group. In 2006/7, the association launched environmental guidelines for music festivals. The original printed booklet "Green'n'Clean" has been supplemented by a new online tool, providing festival organisers with customised environmental advice plus a «Green'n'Clean Award» for festivals who achieve a defined number of criterias in terms of environmental measures. So far, over 20 Yourope members have achieved the necessary points and received the «Green'n'Clean Award». In cooperation with the Bucks New University, Yourope organised a first seminar for “sustainable management for events” in February 2009. The next seminar which is scheduled for November 2009 is in preparation. In October 2008, Yourope in cooperation with Virtual Festivals launched the first pan-European Festival portal eu.virtualfestivals.com which will seek to bring together more than 3000 music festivals, 20,000 performing artists and 50 million festival-goers across 45 countries. There are also negociations to launch a European Festival Award in 2010.  |
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