For the seventh year in a row we will gather - the little ones, the big ones, the curious, the roguish - all filled with expectation in the Ljubljana castle or elsewhere in Ljubljana each Sunday from July 3rd up to September 4th to be allured away into the fairy tale world.  Fairy tales are no imaginary dreams but rather a poetically re-created reality. This is how we see the stories written by the Danish writer Hans Ch. Andersen, whose 200th anniversary of birth we celebrate this year. His fairy tales keep enchanting us like fresh morning flowers still having so much to tell us. Through their measure for what is pretty and right or what is to be gently mocked, they still help us understand the world - even now with our life conditions having changed so radically.  

This year, the festival will pay its tribute to this great master with the performances The Tinder Box, Thumbellina and The Emperor’s New Clothes. During the summer we will also enjoy trembling and laughing with heroes from other fairy tales written by other storywriters. We will see performances made by artists from: Israel, Poland, Belarus, Russia, Sweden, Bulgaria, Croatia and Slovenia.

To make our Mini Summer even more festive we have invited also a children choir The Zagreb Boys Choir to join us. And there will be knights and castle dames, and all sort of creative workshops where we will make sculptures, drawings, paintings or just bungles and botches just like in the past, but most of all we will have fun in giving way to our creativity.

We are sincerely grateful to all those who helped with the festival: The Department of Culture at the Municipality of Ljubljana, the Ministry of Culture of the Republic Slovenia, The Tourist Board of Ljubljana, all partners, patrons and sponsors. Special thanks to the Mayor of the City of Ljubljana, Mrs. Danica Simšič, who once again accepted to be the honourable patron of our Mini Summer Festival.

And here is this summer, warm and wonderful summer.

 

Yours,

Robert Waltl