report: Needle 2024
Needle Residency & Festival
29 March - 11 May 2024
This past Spring, SCALA took on production, marketing and curation duties, as well as designed the capacity-building activities including mentorship programme, roundtable sessions, and parallel events for Needle Residency & Festival, a project by the Larnaka 2030 European Capital of Culture Candidate City, and created by Larnaca-based arts-lover Giorgos Antoniou.
The six-week multidisciplinary residency aimed to tackle Cyprus’ identity crisis by researching and embracing its cultural heritage, with a special focus on Larnaca, before the artists presented their creations alongside the lineup of Needle’s one-day festival. Three musicians were part of the group of the six selected resident artists.
Key results:
The creation of new original works, contributing to the expansion of Cyprus’ repertoire and artistic identity.
The expansion of artists’ network of professional collaborators: the artists and mentors continued their professional collaboration beyond the end of the project - although this was not an objective, nor was it suggested to them.
Record number of live music artists performing at Zouhouri Square since it’s 2023 opening.
Record amount of original music sets ever performed at the square and within a single day (so far) since it’s 2023 opening.
Record amount of music written & performed by artists from Larnaka ever performed at the square since it’s 2023 opening.
Needle’s festival lineup of 6 live music acts makes up the only original musical works programmed at the square this year (so far), and the most ever performed at the square in a night (5 more than the previous record).
Of note is the strong contrast that Needle’s Residency & Festival not only held with its setting in Zouhouri Square, but to the status quo of the large majority of music and cultural organisations in the whole country. Cyprus suffers from a heavy and damaging karaoke (cover music) culture, and its population - even including cultural organisers, venues, and radio producers, sadly - is markedly unaware of Cypriot original repertoire and songwriters, or new repertoire from the past 2 years, creating a self-inflicted erasure of culture in terms of audience development and curation. In emphasising this stark contrast, SCALA calls on music and cultural organisers to exhibit more responsible curation, and dedication towards developing their audiences to boost awareness of Cypriot repertoire. In parallel, SCALA calls on the Deputy Ministry of Culture to develop co-creative programmes and to allocate funding for new commercial repertoire as a means of nurturing the creation of more Cypriot repertoire.
Read more about Needle’s resident artists and mentors here.
Check out photos from Needle’s festival here.