Thursday, 18. 1. 2018

Award-wining MENT festival

The MENT Ljubljana festival, organised since 2015 by Kino Šiška, received as many as two awards at the biggest European showcase festival Eurosonic Noorderslag, namely, for Best Small Festival and Best Indoor Festival in Europe.

Since 2009 European Festival Awards (EFA) are presented to the best European music festivals. In 2017 they were deciding between some 350 festivals in fifteen categories with the jury and the public voting.
In each category ten festivals together with MENT Ljubljana were competing for the title. In addition to MENT, this year’s award winners are also festivals EXIT, Sziget, Roskilde, Pohoda, Down The Rabbit Hole, Goodlive (promotor of the Berlin Lollapalooza) and others.

The awards received are a big recognition and encouragement for the young festival, its team, the audience, co-producers, partners, supporters, the city of Ljubljana and the Slovenian music scene in general.

About the MENT Ljubljana festival and conference

MENT Ljubljana received the awards only two weeks before its fourth staging in Ljubljana between 31 January and 2 February 2018. Almost 70 fresh and daring music performers from all over Europe will appear at the festival, and the organizers expect over 400 foreign and Slovenian delegates to take part in the music industry and creativity conference.
The festival is focused on regional and Eastern European music scenes and hosts performers from all around Europe. The same holds true for music professionals – in the past years it hosted representatives of different festivals (EXIT, INmusic, Glastonbury, Sziget, Eurosonic, Pohoda, Tallinn Music Week, Iceland Airwaves, United Islands of Prague, Les Trans Musicales, Rock 4 People, Waves Vienna, Le Guess Who?, Reeperbahn, Taksirat, Super Uho, Europavox…), record labels (One Little Indian, PIAS, Glitterbeat, Ghostly International, Beggars Group…), music agencies (Toutpartout, Belmont, Pitch & Smith, Charmenko, Ink Music, Paper and Iron…), music media (KEXP Radio, Under the Radar, The Quietus, Clash, Intro, Louder Than War, The 405, Drowned in Sound, GIITTV…) and other music-related companies and representative offices, such as Factory 92, The Orchard, Phonofile and numerous music export offices. The conference is also attended by a high number of professionals from our region, especially from Croatia, Serbia and Macedonia, but also from Austria, Hungary, Slovakia, Belarus, Russia and Ukraine.
In addition to the MENT Ljubljana festival and conference, the MENT platform is operating throughout the year supporting and promoting Slovenian performers and authors abroad – with an emphasis on events, such as Tallinn Music Week, INmusic Festival, Reeperbahn Festival, Eurosonic Noorderslag, Waves Vienna, Budapest Showcase Hub, Liverpool Sound City, Taksirat Festival, Moscow Music Week… Within the scope of the MENT platform activities 12 Slovenian groups and artists performed at different foreign festivals and events and put on 15 performances in 2017.