Colorful Festival in London UK
The Eritrean Public Campaign Committee will host a two-day Festival 21/22 October 2011 @ "The Decorium" in Wood Green London, 22 Western Road, N22-6UH
The annual Eritrean Festival offers a wonderful and unique opportunity to introduce Eritrean cultures and traditions, and meet and share with Eritreans from all over the United Kingdom. It provides participants with a fun and creative environment for networking and discovery.
•Friday 21/10/2011 ( Starts 17;00 - Ends 01;00)
•Saturday 22/10/2011 ( Starts 11;00 - Ends 01;00)
Festival Eritrea is a yearly folk-fair. It first started in 1984, during the years of the struggle for liberation, has had enormous impact on Eritrean heritage of conserving national identity.
The history of the founding of festival Eritrea is a cultural political counterpart of the "unity in diversity" policy of the Eritrean People Liberation Front, and its strategy of political and cultural representation.
National festival long before and after independence promoted the political praxis of homogenization the different Eritrean societies and created a frame of reference that de-emphasized local differences. In this culture, new types developed, and cultural traditions were re-evaluated in order to attach then to the form of national representation associated with the "unity in diversity" policy of the struggle for liberation and strong belief in an indivisible nation later depicted as "one people, one heart".
Since 1984, Eritreans in the diasporas in Europe gathered annually in Bologna, Italy, in order to take part in a "national" festival consisting principally of live musical and dance shows, drama presentations, seminars and sale of native cooking and cuisines, and to listen to the latest developments.
Festival Eritrea in Bologna was an annual folk-fair where all these social, economic, and political resources were mobilized and negotiated and put together mainly in the form of live stage shows in the presences of Diaspora Eritrean people.
Though Festival Eritrea did give a twist or new dimension, cultural ceremonies. After independence the Festival Coordinating Committees, have striven to promote national unity and cultural diversity by encouraging points of contact and exchange between the different cultural traditions.
Festival Eritrea is an annual event recreated in 1993 out of which evolved region based folk fairs involving all the different ethnic groups, thereby contributing to the formations of a national culture from the multi-cultural make-up of Eritrea.
Festival Eritrea is a traditional cultural event. From the early years of its inception, it involved the presentation of traditional songs and dances of all the people of Eritrea and acted as a platform for ethno cultural affirmation.
