Spring Festival is a biannual event organized by Culture Resource to present a wide range of the most prominent artists in music, literature, visual arts, theatre, and dance from around the world, most of whom have never performed for Egyptian and Lebanese audiences before. Spring Festival seeks to bring to a wide audience artistic works that are of a high artistic quality, and at the same time that can appeal to diverse audiences while being produced outside the mainstream commercial realm.
First presented in 2004 as one of the original programs of Culture Resource, the Spring Festival has become a widely-anticipated biannual festival that brings the best international artists from around the world, usually for their first appearance in the region, and reaches audiences of 7000-8000 people of all ages and backgrounds. In addition to performances, the festival also includes side programs and workshops with visiting artists, and attracts audiences of 7000-8000. For the festival’s most recent edition in 2012, artists from Zanzibar, the Netherlands, Tajikistan, Germany, and Turkey among other countries participated.
2014 will mark not only the 10 year anniversary of Spring Festival but also of the founding of Culture Resource, and will feature artists from Africa, including performers from South Africa, Zimbabwe, the Comoros Islands, Senegal, Tunisia, and more. In addition, the festival will include a night to commemorate the memory of Nelson Mandela and his legacy in Cairo. The 2014 edition will run from April 24-May 25, with performances in Cairo and Beirut, in collaboration with the Cultural Cooperative for Youth in Theatre and Cinema (Shams) in Lebanon.
In addition, from May 1-15 the second edition of the international art festival Redzone will be hosted by Culture Resource in Cairo and Beirut, within the context of Spring Festival, in collaboration with the Cultural Cooperative for Youth in Theatre and Cinema (Shams) in Lebanon and KKV of Norway. The concept behind the Redzone festival is that true freedom of expression cannot exist without giving the arts access to a broad audience. Artists have the ability to transmit a deeper reflection of the reality than the rhetoric of politicians and the media. If the reflections of the reality are left to politicians the media and commercial entertainment, we will see a simplification of the truth. The complexity of human life on all levels needs to be mirrored in many ways, and Redzone makes the statement that the way artists do this, is one of the most important contributions to the development of human liberation.
KKV, the Norwegian initiator of the festival, has subtitled the festival "Free the Arts", which underlines that the festival is about freedom of expression through the arts. The first Redzone happened in Oslo in March 2013, and the second edition will be held in Cairo and Beirut in the context of Spring Festival.
