By: Lučka Peljhan, director of competition segment of Golden Drum festival
The 23rd Golden Drum in this year’s competition program announces many new features. The structure of competition remains the same in two sections, although the sections themselves this year will be fully renewed, and the works within them will be judged by two prestigious juries comprised of leading experts of the global creative industries. The biggest news of this year’s competition are certainly the Golden Drum Adriatic awards, which open up new possibilities for creative artists from the region.
Prestigious awards for creativity in the region
As is the case with local, the regional characteristics and peculiarities also create a unique cultural space, and thus a special creative framework. Golden Drum wishes to particularly support creativity in the region from which it developed into an international and world-famous festival.
In recent years, successful individuals and agencies from the region are proving increasingly successful at international festivals. They have brought a whole new energy to the Golden Drum festival, they’ve picked up many major awards and, in particular, with their rewards they have significantly contributed to the overall success of their agency networks. When Dušan Drakalski literally swept the competition at the scene of Golden Drum, Ekrem Dupanović on the Media Marketing portal wrote that the region is finally coming back to the Golden Drum. Has the region really returned to the Golden Drum? Certainly not (yet) in the volume that we would all like. Hence came the initiatives from different people, and different countries. It looks like the scales have finally been tipped by Ekrem’s persistence in underlining the obvious fact: the region needs its own awards for creativity.
Golden Drum 2016 is opening its doors wide open to its region. All entries from the Adriatic region – from Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Kosovo, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia and Slovenia – from now on, with no special application, also compete for the regional awards Golden Drum Adriatic, which will be awarded on the basis of collected points in this year’s Golden Drum competition. The current winners of the national festivals in these countries, or more precisely the best rated works from these festivals, will compete at the Golden Drum based on special invitation of the organizers of the festival, and for all applicants from the region organizer will prepare special favorable conditions for participation. Thus the distance between the festival and the region further reduces.
How will the competition take place? The Golden Drum announces a special, digitally supported scoring system for the entries from the region that will take into account not only the points for the highest awards, but also the results of all the rounds of voting. Based on such points, ten finalists will be announced in each of the competitive sections. Best ranked works in each section will be awarded with the awards Golden Drum Adriatic, Silver Drum Adriatic and Bronze Drum Adriatic, while the finalists will receive certificates.
A new competition category intended for local traits
Throughout the years Golden Drum has paid special attention to identifying and nurturing the creative use of local characteristics. Genius loci, the spirit of the place, is part of the genetic makeup of the Golden Drum festival. As of now, the Local spirit will no longer be only a recommendation for assessment of works. Works that base their creative solutions on the traits of a certain place now compete in an independent category, and for the first time the Golden Drum will present the awards for the best capture of a local spirit.
Two different sections and two juries of world renown
Competition of Golden Drum this year is divided into Best Piece section and Best Practice section.
In accordance with the structure of the competition program, entries will be judged by two independent juries, that will be among the most powerful Golden Drum juries so far, as they will be composed of top creatives that we know from the list of the most creative creators of the world.
More on all of this will be revealed over the following days.
