Culture
The municipality tries to provide all inhabitants of Ventspils with good opportunities to attend various cultural and leisure events according to their interests ensuring both the availability of professional art, and opportunity to cultivate one's artistic talent in amateur art groups. After the reconstruction of Theatre House "Juras varti" and the construction of the new building of Parventa Library, Ventspils has certainly become an important regional cultural centre.
Ventspils is famous for its big concerts, festivals and other cultural and leisure events gathering thousands of people. The municipality does its best to establish new traditions and turn ordinary days into holidays.
Every winter Ventspils hosts the awarding ceremony of the Latvian Radio broadcast "Musical Bank" and the televised national selection for the Eurovision Song Contest. In July everyone can enjoy the final concert of the Latvian pop music poll "The Musical Hits" in Renka Garden.
On the second weekend of July, the city holds celebrations of the Sea Festival. On the first weekend of August, people from far and near places come to Ventspils to take part in the annual City Festival.
Other traditional celebrations include the formal opening of summer tourism season, the Parventa Festival, the Children's Festival, the Blue Flag Raising Celebrations, the Festival of National Cultures "Ventspils Crown", the Meet of Baltic Sea Region's Bikers, the International Modern Rhythm Music Festival & Master Class organized in collaboration with Ventspils Music College, etc.
Educational and entertaining programmes for children are an integral part of the cultural life of Ventspils. Ventspils families with kids eagerly attend Sunday events in the children's playground "Children's Town" and the children's park "Fantasy".
Ventspils City Council regularly supplies a number of grants to help fund cultural events and free-time activities for the youth, thus promoting participation and engagement in the city life and increasing diversity of professional art.
There are several institutions taking responsibility for the cultural life of Ventspils, including:
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Famous quotes containing the word culture:
“The white dominant culture seemed to think that once the Indians were off the reservations, they’d eventually become like everybody else. But they aren’t like everybody else. When the Indianness is drummed out of them, they are turned into hopeless drunks on skid row.”
—Elizabeth Morris (b. c. 1933)
“There has never been in history another such culture as the Western civilization M a culture which has practiced the belief that the physical and social environment of man is subject to rational manipulation and that history is subject to the will and action of man; whereas central to the traditional cultures of the rivals of Western civilization, those of Africa and Asia, is a belief that it is environment that dominates man.”
—Ishmael Reed (b. 1938)
“The second fundamental feature of culture is that all culture has an element of striving.”
—Johan Huizinga (1872–1945)