One Caucasus is an interdisciplinary festival and a long-term borderland program that first took a place in Georgia in 2014. The event is located in a region Marneuli, Kvemo-Kartli, at the border between Armenia and Azerbaijan. Here - you can learn more about our story and roots of One Caucasus. Check out this article to find more about the One Caucasus NGO.
Learn more about One Caucasus from our Information Brochure (pdf).
When?
One Caucasus Festival is organized every year during summer. Each year the main part of work for One Caucasus starts in first half of August when the international volunteers arrive and start to work in various task teams.
Why Kvemo-Kartli?
The Caucasus suffers from many conflicts. The region of Kvemo-Kartli is a borderland of Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan and is known for being a place where many ethnic and religious groups have been living in peace for many years. It is quite unique in the Caucasus which continues to suffer from a range of conflicts and tensions. Our aim is, with the support of the local municipality, to create an inspirational & safe space to foster the meetings and collaboration of young people from the entire Caucasus region.
What makes this Festival special?
One Caucasus Festival brings together musicians, artists, architects, educators and volunteers from all over the world.
It is a festival of the next generation:
- joint international music projects created by professional musicians from Caucasus and beyond,
- multifunctional One Caucasus Town co-created by architects, volunteers and locals – packed with program of various interdisciplinary activities,
- visual arts program bringing prominent contemporary artists into the context of life of local villages.
A change-maker also to non-festival life:
- to support establishing first ever participatory budget in Caucasus - with people deciding on local budget spending.
- the festival was the reason for some of the infrastructure development - including repairing parts of the road to Tserakvi (first home of One Caucasus) - now villages such as Tserakvi, Sioni, Ahkula, Shaumiani have 5-10 minutes less to get to Marneuli, Tbilisi or borders of Armenia and Azerbaijan,
- conducting all-year Informal Educational Program for villages of Marneuli, Kvemo-Kartli
Festival made by people for people:
- offers an international volunteer program to co-create the Festival,
- includes the art projects (films, installations, etc.) created by youth from Kvemo-Kartli villages in framework of our educational program,
- the Festival has free admission, free transport (Tbilisi/venue/Tbilisi) and free living zone
Come and join us for the unique One Caucasus experience!
One Caucasus 2024
22-25 August
Tserakvi, Marneuli
We play for Peace, Freedom, Human Life & Dignity. We stand together with all victims of the wars. You can read more about our support for Ukraine and how Ukrainian artists, architects, musician contributed to One Caucasus in 2022.
One Caucasus 2014-2022 in numbers:
- More than 420 volunteers from 40 countries came for One Caucasus International Volunteer Program to work in many international task teams to create One Caucasus Festival and Educational Program.
- 570 musicians (individual musicians and 86 bands & collectives) from at least 21 countries created together 46 new international music projects and performed @ One Caucasus Festival. (Armenia, Azerbaijan, Algeria, Barbados, France, Georgia, Germany, Iran, Jamaica, New Zealand, Nigeria, Poland, Scotland, Senegal, UK, Ukraine, USA and more)
- 105 different workshops/cycles of workshops were led by educators coming from 30 countries (5 continents) for more than 1580 persons (especially kids and youth) from 28 villages and towns (Armenian, Azerbaijani, Georgian, Greek and Armenian-Azerbaijani) of Kvemo-Kartli region.
- Architects and students of architecture from Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Germany, Iran, Poland, Ukraine and Tunisia that together (with other volunteers) designed and constructed each year unique One Caucasus Town called also Not-Perfect Town of Our Dreams (9 editions). The materials used for each year are stored and used to construct next year's town. We also carried out 6 participatory architecture processes in 5 different villages of Marneuli,
- Around 21 000+ people attended the One Caucasus Festival
