More than Woodstock: peace, music and social change at the One Caucasus festival
Here in the Caucasus mountains lies a small Georgian village called Tserakvi. It is located a couple of hours from Tbilisi and half an hour to the borders with Armenia and Azerbaijan.Every year it transforms into an international event venue and hosts artists, musicians, architects and educators from all over the world. From 24th to 27th of August the fourth One Caucasus music festival will take place.
Breaking stereotypes
The main goal of the festival is to unite young people from the Caucasus —a region with complicated geopolitics and ongoing conflicts. For example, military actions are on and off — even today — in Nagorno-Karabach. It is a disputed area with an ethnic Armenian majority which is located on the territory of Azerbaijan but is functioning as an independent state.
This is only one case of tensions in the Caucasian region. However, there are some positive examples of intercultural coexistence. In the Marneuli region of Georgia, Armenian and Azerbaijani population have been living peacefully for decades. That is why the local village Tserakvi was chosen to be the venue for the festival.

Here at the festival many young Armenians and Azerbaijanis meet for the first time. Brainwashed by governmental propaganda, they come full of negative stereotypes about each other. 21 year old Shafaq Fatullaeva from Baku recalls her first impressions from meeting with an Armenian which happened two years ago while volunteering at the festival:
I was a bit afraid and curious at the same time, because I had never seen an Armenian person before. If you live in Azerbaijan you hear all the time that they killed or raped someone. It is difficult to get rid of this image.
The same problem faces many young Armenians. When 28 year old Anush Arzumanian from Yerevan learned that Shafaq was Azerbaijani, she was confused about sleeping in the same room as her. As Shafaq recalls:
When she was ill and I gave her medicine, she asked me to try it first. I was so ashamed that she thinks in this way about Azerbaijani people. But eventually we became best friends.
Free, multi-disciplinary and cross-border
The festival itself lasts for four days, but the preparation for it begins three weeks in advance. Dozens of volunteers from all over the world stay together in the building of a local school and collaborate to create the event. They design and build the festival town, go around to nearby villages and conduct workshops with local children, and work on promotion and logistics.

The One Caucasus festival is free and open for everyone. Here hipsters and hippies meet traditional Caucasian families and older people coming from the neighbouring villages. There is no admission fee and organizers provide transportation from borders and the capital Tblilisi. Additionally there is a camping zone in the pine forest.
Musical styles vary widely from year to year. The 2017 edition is going to be full of folk genres. However, some experimental and synthpop bands are included too. Most of the musicians come from Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan. During the festival they work together and present their common pieces to the audience.
People from Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan don’t have an occasion to work together and here they have this space, — says musical director of the festival Pako Sarr, Senegali musician living in Poland.
Developing local communities
For its non-commercial and open charachter One Caucasus is often compared to the American Woodstock. However, the Caucasian version is much more meaningful. The director of the festival polish activist Witek Hebanowski explains:
American Woodstock had hundred times more people, but they didn’t have any Vietnamese people. Here we have many different ethnicities, but at the same time we should not be confused with peacebuilding organizations. We can not solve the Karabach conflict and its not even a topic here. We are here to work and see the results in the end. In this aspect we are more than Woodstock.

By “work” Hebanowski means not only the festival itself. One Caucasus also performs as a change maker in local communities. The team of the festival cooperates closely with Marneuli municipal administration. Because of the event local authorities renovated the road to the village and local school was equipped with showers and new toilets.
Besides, the first participatory budgeting in Georgia came as a result of the festival. It is a tool of urban development which allows citizens to get involved into decision making process. So part of the municipal budget is spent according to their will.
Changes happen in the minds of locals too. For many inhabitants of the villages the festival is the only opportunity to meet foreigners and get to know other cultures. Local children are left with scarce entertainment opportunities during the summer and impatiently wait for the volunteers to arrive. Together they shoot films and animations, draw, learn languages and play games.

During these workshops children gain confidence to create things, so we hope that they will carry this feeling through their lives and will initiate changes in their own communities, — explains Hebanowski.
The Tunisian volunteer and architect Reem Chaki tried to inspire children of Aghmamedlo village to improve their living space.
We were just talking about their future and many of them said that they want to leave Aghmamedlo for the U.S.A. I proposed to them the opposite — bring America to their village. So they came up with lots of ideas, like having a library, cafes and supermarkets. Of course, it’s just a dream, but if we won’t dream nothing will ever change, — Reem concludes.
More details about the festival and program can be found here.