Since 2010 the Kamianets-Podilskyi Fortress of the 14th century has gathered thousands of visitors for the music festival Respublica. This year the organizers were made to change the format due to the pandemic restrictions.
The festival was held on Sept. 25-28, both online and in-person. While those who were physically present had to pay for their tickets, the online version was free. First, it was scheduled on Sept. 25-27 but then, due to a tragic military aircraft crash in Kharkiv Oblast, Sept. 26 was announced as a national day of mourning, and all events scheduled for that day were put on hold and broadcasted online on Sept. 28.
Though the offline option was available only for 100 visitors, organizers live-streamed all concerts and activities on YouTube channels of Ukrainian platforms such as Kolegi Studio, Slukh and Super Sus. Moreover, for a better experience, web developers created a virtual festival using Minecraft.
They reproduced all locations of the festival in detail: the castle, a bridge and a river, dressing rooms for performers, a tent camp, and more. Apart from watching concerts and strolling around the virtual fortress, the guests could shoot from a virtual bow, take away virtual garbage from the fortress, plant virtual trees and go on quests created by public organizations.
Although the festival ended, the online platform is still available on Minecraft. Visitors can enter the game, build their houses or create street-art.
Besides, during the festival, organizers invited famous musicians and journalists for the offline part of the festival to act as ‘avatars’ for the online version. The online audience could request the avatars to go to particular locations that were shown in real life through Zoom.
During the offline part of the festival, there also was outdoor painting by artists and musical competitions of beginning performers.
This year the festival was unprofitable for the organizers, and the money that was made from sold tickets was transferred to support the musicians.
“This year we didn’t think about breaking even, the main task of the festival and the project is to support the music industry during the pandemic, support musicians, stage and sound renters, designers, visual and audio-visual artists involved in the festival, all those who have been in the lockdown since March,” Andriy Zoin, founder and director of the Respublica FEST, told the Kyiv Post.
The Ukrainian Cultural Foundation sponsored the development of the online platform and technological setup for communicating with ‘avatars,’ Zoin said to Ukrainian media outlet Delo.ua.
This year about 70 Ukrainian and foreign artists gave concerts in Kamianets-Podilskyi and another 30 bands live-streamed their concerts from 10 Ukrainian cities such as Go-A, Latexfauna, Cloudless, Stasik and others. 70,000 people visited the online festival, Zoin told the Kyiv Post.
