Press release
The Slovenian cultural programme Seviqc Brežice 2021 was performed with 6 concerts and 6 upbeats from 7 to 23 August 2021 at 4 historical venues in 3 Slovenian municipalities. In co-production with RTV Slovenia, we prepared videos of all concerts. These are now finalized and available for free on YouTube with access via the ONLINE menu on our website.
The 40th season of Seviqc Brežice was carried out again this year under the honorary patronage of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts, which has been our honorary sponsor since 2014. We obtained European funds. Both Spanish concerts were co-financed by Acción Cultural Española under the PICE Mobility programme, and the Butter Quartet concert was co-financed by the European Commission and the Collegio Ghislieri Pavia under the eeemerging+ project. The festival programme with the logos of the most important partners is published in the festival leaflet, festival flyers, and concert leaflets, at https://www.seviqc-brezice.si/publications.html. Since moving from Radovljica to Brežice in 1997, Seviqc Brežice has prepared 770 events (concerts, upbeats, film screenings, promotional events, exhibitions, workshops, residencies, lectures, symposia, conferences) in 53 Slovenian municipalities and 33 events outside Slovenia.
Radio Slovenija recorded all six of this year's concerts, two of which were also broadcast live on the3. channel ARS. You will be able to hear them again on the show Banchetto Musicale in the spring of 2022. The Seviqc Brežice 2021 programme was performed by 21 artists from Canada, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, and the United States. Slovenian artists were not included in this year's programme, which happened for the first time in the history of our programme. The reason is the Covid 19 pandemic, when we moved almost the entire already approved last year's programme to this year, but due to extremely limited sources of public co-financing at both the state and local level, we could not increase the number of concerts. Regardless of this, we have done a lot for the Slovenian early music scene, its development and establishment on the international stage, which places us among the important actors of Slovenian cultural policy.
Due to the required distance, the number of visitors has halved compared to the pre-Covid period. We recorded 407 visitors, most of whom came from the city of Ljubljana (41.5%). 84.8% of visitors came from other areas, which, in addition to the national profile of the visit, also means a contribution to cultural tourism. With a residence outside Slovenia, we recorded 3.7% of visitors. The basic ticket price was the same for all concerts and varied according to the time of purchase, from EUR 10 at the start of the sale to EUR 25 on the day of the concert. The average price of a purchased ticket was EUR 13.01, and the average price of all issued tickets was EUR 5.60. 45.7% of visitors bought tickets at the current price, 27.3% received them free of charge (next family tickets, donors, guests, journalists, business), and 27.0% attended events where admission was free.
Among several possible discounts, visitors benefited from the discounts of the Festival Lady Friends Club (22.6% of all purchased tickets) and family packages (4.0% of all tickets). 25.8% of visitors responded to the questionnaire. The reasons for the visit were the performing artist (21.4%), the concert programme (20.2%), the festival location and the reputation of the festival (both 19.2%) and the experience of visiting in previous years (13.4%), as well as the recommendation friends and acquaintances, and criticism and reports of the festival in the media. 92.96% of visitors believe that the upbeat is instructive. The average age is 65.6 years, 93.1% of visitors have a higher education. More statistical data can be found in the tables of the implementation report at https://www.seviqc-brezice.si/report.html.
If the Ministry of Culture confirms our application for the four-year programme tender 2022-2025, we can expect as many as three Slovenian ensembles in our festival programme next year, as well as the continuation of co-production with RTV Slovenia (recording of concerts and videos), release of the digital album The Best of Seviqc, conference development of upbeats, in cooperation with schools we can expect workshops Potepi priGodbe, the purpose of which is to explore the connections between different cultural entities, intergenerational cooperation, learning about the organization of the event and audience development. We are preparing cultural tourism programmes Potepi Open.