Moving Baltic Sea – Sailing film and environmental festival, July and August 2008

    It’s been a long journey from the very beginning to the day the Moving Baltic Sea project set sail as a travelling film and environment festival. When we first came up with the idea for Moving Baltic Sea, we had a rather hazy vision of working together with people from countries adjoining the Baltic Sea in order to find new, inspiring ways to tackle ecological challenges and to spark cultural exchange. Several thoughts and questions have been guiding us ever since. It seems that in light of the political changes within the last two decades, a common understanding of the problems and chances that affect us all ought to have grown. But is the Baltic Sea really on the move? Are common ecological challenges such as the damage of the marine ecosystem really being addressed? How can we establish a feeling of common responsibility without neglecting cultural and social differences? And last but not least, how can we make use of diverse forms of cultural expression to raise awareness for these issues?

    The vision gradually took on shape and resulted in a festival that in summer 2008 sailed on the ship Lovis from Rostock to Gdansk, Kaliningrad, Riga, Narva- Jõesuu and St. Petersburg. At each stop, four-day festivals with short film programmes, discussions and workshops took place in public spaces, open-air and free of charge. During all events people were invited to let environmental issues inspire them to creatively express themselves. As each local environmental and cultural organisation chose different forms of addressing the public and of implementing the festival, each stop had its own unique atmosphere. While the Polish organisations arranged events in the main pedestrian zone, the Latvian partners decided on newly emerging alternative artist locations as venues. While the Moving Baltic Sea crew received a lot of media attention and was invited to a TV debate show in Russia, the Estonians decided to let pupils produce their own Moving Baltic Sea TV news. After busy and inspiring festival days, activists and artists from one country joined the crew on board of the Lovis to sail to the next country, to work and live together for a few days. Once we arrived at the

    next stop, we shared our impressions and experiences thus far in the form of exhibitions, documentaries and presentations.

    In the course of two years of joint project preparation and an enriching festival experience, we not only made crucial Baltic Sea issues move, but also learned a lot from each other – 60 organisers, 120 sailors, 350 volunteers, artists and experts and a total of 15000 festival visitors. The result is an enduring network of artists, filmmakers, environmental activists and organisers from various cultural and environmental institutions. Moving Baltic Sea made an essential contribution to the exchange of ideas and people from which we will all profit in the future.

    Moving Visions – Seminar on International Project Development, September 2009

     

    As follow-up of the Moving Baltic Sea project, we met again in 2009 with our Estonian, Latvian, Polish, German and Dutch partners on the sailing ship Lovis. During the first ‘organizational speed dating day’, we ‘dated’ in order to create new project ideas and to look for new ways of cooperation between the different on-board organizations. The outcomes of this day were used throughout the rest of the seminar in the daily workshops that all participants gave and attended. These workshops addressed different aspects of international project development, such as practical exercises in international sponsoring and fundraising, how to benefit from international creative platforms, how to develop a project concept etc.

    The intensive program was alternated with a few hours of sailing every day. We had a fruitful exchange in experiences, created common project ideas and strengthened the network.

    The last evening, the international crew arrived in Hamburg harbour, where we held our public film screening “Segelflimmern”. Around four hundred visitors came to enjoy our international short films, projected on the main sail of the Lovis.

    The projects Moving Baltic Sea and Moving Visions were mainly funded by the EU Youth in Action programme.

    You can find more information and our contact details on our website www.moviemiento.org

    Movies of our project http://lovis.de/medien/