Throughout 2018, The European Commission will be encouraging Europeans to discover and engage with their history, identity and traditions. A number of events will take place across Europe to celebrate the past, present and future of our shared culture.

EFA is a partner of the European Commission for the European Year of Cultural Heritage (EYCH) and all EFA members from an EU Country, Western Balkans, Switzerland, Norway or Iceland, can use the EYCH label during 2018 to give their programmes extra visibility.

This European Year of Cultural Heritage 2018 is a unique opportunity to encourage more people to discover and explore Europe’s rich and diverse cultural heritage. Festivals have been contributing to Europe’s artistic life for decennia. Arts Festivals have inspired the artistic discourse and reflected the social and historical turning points in Europe’s last and current centuries. Festivals bring thousands and thousands of audiences and visitors to cities every year – and your festival brings an added value to a city’s offer. The very particular meaning festivals can give to people’s daily lives is immeasurable.

It is quite impressive to see how festivals are deeply involved with both tangible and intangible heritage and our EFA members are active in all aspects of working with, and for, heritage either when working in UNESCO sites, working with historic monuments, promoting our common intangible heritage and investing in bringing people together in a unique moment and format creating the heritage of the future.

Check out the official EYCH2018 website where you can find out more about the events organised all over Europe, the press release and fact sheet of the European Commission.

Here is an overview of the aims and objectives of the EYCH 2018. And here is the legal decision calling for the EYCH.