If you are planning a tourist visit to the European Capital of Culture during the Easter and May Day holidays, or you are staying in your city during the upcoming non-working days, we are bringing you a touch of art that will complement your holidays. We have numerous suggestions on how to make good use of these spring days alone, with friends, or with family, and we invite you to read our suggestions, but also embrace a dose of culture; mark these events and dates in your calendars, indulge in art and enjoy the holidays.
Culture Is in Motion: Exhibitions You Must Visit
Spring has brought new colours to the city of culture, so we recommend that you walk Zmaj Jovina Street during this or the next ‘holiday’ week, and then the oldest street in the city, Dunavska Street, where during the holidays, excluding Easter, Museum of Vojvodina will open its doors to you, in which you can see Roman helmets from the 4th century in person. Working hours during the holidays will be from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., so we recommend that you use the opportunity until the end of April and visit the exhibition Where Migrations End: From Roman Pannonia to Today’s Vojvodina. On Mondays, educational games for children aged 9 to 15 are held in this museum – Museum Escape: Mythological Adventure, which we are sure will delight them. In the same street, the Foreign Art Collection offers the exhibition Accents – Novi Sad, so you can visit it, although on weekdays only, until the end of April. Let the road also take you through the Danube Park, to Studio M, where, during working days as well, the exhibition Time and Universe awaits you, so go on a unique journey from darkness to light and from chaos to space. Intrigued? The Gallery of Matica Srpska will be open to visitors on Friday, 22 April and Saturday, 23 April from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., while it will be closed on Sunday, 24 April and 1 May, so take a walk to this cultural institution because the current exhibition Art of Migration, Migration in Art awaits you there, as well as the project Growing Up in the City of Culture, i.e. classical music concerts for babies and children held on Saturdays.
We advise you to spend the last weekend of the month in the renovated Creative District, where, as part of the rich Flags of the Future programme, which includes more than 70 events in just three days, from 28 to 30 April, four phenomenal exhibitions await you. Do not miss Drawings Travel Through Time, an exhibition of drawings created by generations of children for more than half a century. Likewise, we recommend a great exhibition of student works They Live that depicts the everyday life of students in Novi Sad, the university city, as well as new contemporary art practices at the exhibition Differences. The exhibition Leave or Stay? will also mark the Flags of the Future in the first open-air gallery in Novi Sad, on Suba’s Plateau in Liman Park.
Artists Revive the Stage: Performances in the City of Culture
In the last days of April, the Creative District will turn into a kind of theatre scene, and we invite you to be a part of the first festival of applied theatre Art in the Palm of Your Hand, within the Flags of the Future, as well as the Groovin’ Street Dance Festival, during which, in addition to seeing some new dance steps, you will get to learn more about hip-hop culture, and also attend the renovation and painting of the skate park in Liman Park. Find out whether the circus should be introduced in schools, as a form of mental and physical recreation, at the panel discussion within the project Find Your Balance! With the Circus?.
The unusual circus performance Écoute / Expansion, by Kitsou Dubois, will reveal the secrets of weightlessness through dance and acrobatic movements.
Admission to all Flags of the Future programmes is free, except for the performance Écoute / Expansion for which you can buy tickets at all Gigstix points of sale, as well as on their website.
The Voice of the Youth Spreads Wide: Concerts in the Creative District
During the three days of the Flags of the Future, four stages throughout the Creative District will be centres of magnificent sound and great energy through a variety of music genres. Do not miss the concerts from 28 to 30 April, because you will hear everything from jazz and rock, through indie and pop, to trap, hip-hop and EDM. The Great Liman area will be ‘spiced up’ by Balkan soul musician Marko Louis, followed by the young jazz ensembles Arthur Possing Quartet, Any Key Trio, Kijube, Hauptman, Purple is the Color, drumbooty, Abase, Frontline Vibers and Turbojazz, as well as the representatives of the new wave in the country and the region Skier and Yeti, Peki Pele, Fantom, Luka Rajić, KOIKOI, Sitzpinker, Xanadu, Tam, Kene Beri, Nihil, Ba$ha, Spejs Noksi, Bigru i Paja Kratak, Micka Lifa, Zoi, Piqued Jacks, Monohrom, Koala Voice, Nemanja, Porto Morto i Šajzerbiterlemon, as well as YusYus, Sebastian Schund, DJ Bend, Stevie, NO Filter and Rođeni , and Feloneezy.
The Flags of the Future programme is sponsored by: IDEA, DDOR, A1 Srbija, and NIS.
Easter Festival on the Promenada Plateau
If you are strolling in the Liman neighbourhood, stop by the nearby Promenada shopping centre, because an Easter festival is being held on its plateau, which will, above all, delight the youngest ones. The awakening of nature and the celebration of the happiest Christian holiday will be enhanced by the rich cultural and musical programme which will be complemented by the creative workshops for children until the end of April. Souvenirs and handicrafts, as well as a wide range of salty and sweet gourmets, will be sold out of authentic wooden houses.
Fun at the Cinema
Once you are in Promenada, your kids will be happy to hear that in anticipation of the happiest Christian holiday, Cineplexx Promenada cinema is organising creative workshops and an Escape Room game for the youngest movie lovers. Bring them to the hall of this cinema on Good Friday, because there will be a joint painting of eggs from 3 to 6 p.m., and on Saturday, 23 April, from 12 to 5 p.m., one part of the hall will be turned into a real Escape Room, so kids will participate in the most exciting search for the missing čuvarkuća – the first painted red egg.
For the May Day Holidays – Straight to Nature Everyone!
In the spring, green parks or Fruška Gora are probably the first to come to mind when someone asks where you will celebrate the Labour Day – 1 May. Beautiful nature, landscaped picnic areas, barbecues, easy hiking trails, a tour of the monastery, the smell of the woods and the chirping of birds, may just be what you need during these holidays, so we advise you to go to Fruška Gora, choose a pleasant place and enjoy. Slowly. That is the Novi Sad way.
Author: Marina Marić
Photos: Jelena Ivanović, Promo/EPK
