Festival Arteficial

www.festivalarteficial.org

Between 18^th and 20^th of August in Ribadavia took place the 5^th edition of Festival Arteficial! The main organizer of this event is the coordinator of our project - Manuel, or “el jefe” as we would call him. So OMIX, Casa da Xuventude and we, the volunteers in particular were involved in the game… It started from the same beginning of my project, even though our minimum level of Spanish did not allow us to do a lot. What we helped with was mainly support for the popularization – bringing posters and flyers around the town and around Galicia, internet advertisement, managing the website and the social networks appearance of the festival.

And so the big day came! After months of hard work the big team of Ribadavian volunteers made possible the final result - three days of great fun with the concerts of over 10 bands from Spain and the special guest ZOE from France. Mostly the genre of music was ROCK and the melody was flowing around from the stage on the central square. The first evening of the festival was fulfilled with three concerts in a row at the local bars, where we were selling T-shirts for the fans; Sonia Andrade, my personal favorite 2us and The Drivestones sang their hearts out… In the Friday evening the big concerts started – five bands in a row, including the really talented Why Go from Vigo, my second favorites J All night RoCkeD; and with no time to rest the second night kept us awake again till the early hours of the morning with five more bands. The audience was not numerous, but really excited, the atmosphere was filled with good vibrations and it all finished with lifting up Manuel high above the crowd with happy shouts! Admirations for all the people doing something for their local community out of good will, with no expectations of profit!

Except for the concerts, some more events were there to be seen – exhibition of the local painters, workshops for Music therapy and Advanced music, performances of Parkour and Graffitti painting, Magician shows, Street circus and Dj sets in the day and night time.

And as a consequence , our apartment turned into an unofficial camping zone with mattresses all around for our guests, the volunteers from Santiago and their friends, our favorite Australian Adam and more people in need for a place to store luggage… Good times, good memories, hasta luego, Arteficial!