Local Hosts

While we have been preparing to host the MitOst Festival 2022 in Moldova and with our partner Ecovisio, the current situation forced us to diverge our plans and change the Festival location.

Thank you, Ecovisio, for your efforts and the heart you put into the MitOst Festival planning in the past 3 years. Your energy is much needed somewhere else now, but we are confident that we will still co-create the Festival experience in years to come.

To provide space for connection and togetherness in these challenging times, the MitOst Festival 2022 will be co-created with hiša! Association for People and Places, our local partner in Maribor, Slovenia. We are grateful for the opportunity to collaborate and co-host the annual civil society celebration of the MitOst network with them this year.

Festival Statement

MitOst and also the MitOst Festival do not exclude anyone because of their national background and will therefore remain open to all its members. However, we do acknowledge that the war escalated by Russia into Ukrainian territories makes a lot of relationships within the MitOst cosmos difficult or even impossible to maintain. We will not mediate nor engage anyone in dialogue. The Festival relies on the respectful engagement and sensitivity of all our present network members. Focusing on Resilient Communities in Times of Uncertainty, we will be looking actively at the Ukrainian cause  and continue our efforts to support Ukraine also through the presence of our Ukraine Solidarity Fund in Maribor.

As a result of many conversations and consultations of MitOst members, we understood that the Festival as network gathering is needed this year not despite but because of the war and the difficulties our communities are going through. We want to create space for togetherness, support resilience building and, in this way, strengthen our network that is and will be facing challenges now and in the near future. We also decided to keep the name MitOst Festival because of its brand, which implies trust and values by which we operate.

Theme of the Festival

It is the 20th edition of the MitOst Festival this year, and in the light of the current global events, it focuses on Resilient Communities in Times of Uncertainty.  We witnessed the power of our network in demonstrating solidarity with people in Ukraine and those who fled the war. Seeing just how the MitOst network can manifest itself across borders and show up for people in need, we decided that this year’s Festival should act as a platform to explore that further. We will focus on how a network and its communities have demonstrated resilience and how we can build upon that starting now.

The Festival constitutes a space for experimentation, conversation and collaboration across borders. It is the place to connect with other people driven by the same values and who want to impact their communities by creating positive, sustainable solutions.

No Members’ Assembly during this Festival 

We would also like to inform you that the Members’ Assembly will not be happening during the Festival this year, but in an online format on September 24, 2022. That decision has been taken to increase the accessibility and inclusivity of the Members’ Assembly. All MitOst Members will be invited to participate in the Members’ Assembly in due time.