EFFE Awards Salon

The festivals community will get together and celebrate at the EFFE Awards Salon on 26 September at BOZAR – Center for Fine Arts, Brussels. Please have a look at the programme below. The registration is now closed, please contact us directly for more information.

Thursday 26 September, BOZAR - Center for Fine Arts Brussels

The Salon Conversations and Award Ceremony take place in the Rotonde Bertouille at BOZAR.

The EFFE Awards Salon is the moment in the EFFE Programme (Europe for Festivals, Festivals for Europe) to bring arts & arts festivals’ work to the attention of public authorities, the European media and all sorts of stakeholders. The Salon brings together 100 festival makers, officials, mayors, ambassadors, cultural institutes, the EFFE International Jury and guests to celebrate and exchange about the importance of arts and culture for people and for its communities, shining the spotlight on a few of all those festivals that have been selected for the EFFE Awards.

15:00 - 16:30 | EFFE Salon Conversations

Festival makers exchange about their work as curators and their responsibility for artists and the arts.

Welcome speeches by:

  • Hermann Schnitzer, EFA Vice-President
  • Tamas Szucs, Director for Culture and Creativity at DG Education, Youth, Sport and Culture - European Commission
  • Pawel Potoroczyn, EFFE International Jury Member

A series of EFFE Salon Conversations with the Lifetime Achievement Award winners facilitate by EFFE Jury Members Virve Sutinen and Haris  Pašović .

  • Frie Leysen, Founder and Director Kunstenfestivaldesarts from 1992-2006
    in conversation with Rabih Mroué,  Stage and Film Actor, Playwright and Visual Artist
  • Dieter Kosslick, Director Berlinale from 2001-2019 in conversation with Beki Probst, Director of the Berlinale European Film Market

16:30 - 17:00 | Coffee Break

17:00 - 18:45 | EFFE Awards Ceremony

Celebration of the EFFE Laureates and announcement of the EFFE Award winners 2019-2020 and the Lifetime Achievement Awards.

  • Welcome back by Jan Briers, EFA President
  • Greetings by Sabine Verheyen, Chair of European Parliament Committee on Culture and Education
  • EFFE Laureates and EFFE Audience Choice announcement by Tibor Navracsics, European Commissioner Education, Culture, Youth and Sport
  • Festival Trip winner drawing by Sven Gatz, Brussels Minister for Finance, the Budget, the promotion of multilingualism, of Tourism  and of the Brussels image and Flemish Minister for Brussels Affairs

EFFE Awards 2019-2020 announcement

  • Video message by Sir Jonathan Mills, EFFE International Jury President
  • Invitations of EFFE Awards 2019-2020 winners by the EFFE International Jury

EFFE Lifetime Achievement Award

  • introduced by Peter Florence and Fairouz Nishanova, EFFE International Jury Members
  • Laudation by Saodat Ismailova for Dieter Kosslick, Director Berlinale from 2001-2019
  • Laudation by Romeo Castellucci for Frie Leysen, Founder and Director Kunstenfestivaldesarts from 1992-2006

18:45 | Dinner reception at Horta Hall hosted by Bertelsmann and the UFA Film Nights

Optional (not possible to combine both concerts):

20:00 | UFA Film Nights Concert (Tickets can be reserved through the registration form)
BOZAR - Centre of FIne Arts Brussels

19:45 | Flanders Festival Ghent - Méditerra-Nuit (Tickets can be reserved through the registration form)
You can take a 35-min train at Brussels central station (at 19:45) to Ghent Sint-Pieters to enjoy 2 concerts in different locations:

20:45 Greek magic with Papadopoulou @Minard Ghent
22:15 O’Fado with Marco Rodrigues @Opera Ghent 
Last train back to Brussels from Gent Sint-Pieters at 23:48

EFFE Awards 2019-2020

The EFFE International Jury has selected 24 EFFE Laureates 2019-2020 representing Europe’s diverse cultural scene from digital arts to opera from a list of 715 festivals with the EFFE Label, all featuring on FestivalFinder.eu. From these 24 EFFE Laureates, 5 festivals will receive the EFFE Award 2019-2020 representing a selection of practices and ambitions within the arts festivals’ community the Jury considers important to highlight. EU Commissioner for Culture Mr. Tibor Navracsics and the EFFE International Jury and EFA’s President will hand over the Awards.

EFFE: Europe for Festivals - Festivals for Europe

EFFE: Europe for Festivals - Festivals for Europe is a preparatory action (2017, 2018, 2019, following a pilot project 2014-2016) to set up a single programme for all arts festivals in Europe: EFFE is all arts, a brand, a reference point, a database. It embraces high ambitions building on a unique link to the arts world. 

This project was initiated by the European Festivals Association and is supported by the European Commission and European Parliament

FestivalFinder.eu is a unique tool to reach out to audiences with information from more than 2000 festivals.  

The European Festivals Association is supported by the Brussels-Capital Region for the organisation of the EFFE Awards Salon and EFFE's Audience Choice.