News

Croatian Wire

Miklós Cseszneky writes:
I would just like to let you know that the Lincolnshire Croatian group has recently launched an English-language Telegram channel called Croatian Wire. We do not produce anything original, simply monitor the international press on a daily basis, and curate a couple of articles that seem to be relevant and interesting. As an average we share about 5 articles a day. Croatian Wire is apolitical and publishes articles of different political and ideological hues, so long as they are related to Croatia.

You can find more here.

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Dalmatian Islands Environment Foundation Executive Summary

For more information and tickets please click here.

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British-Croatian Society Annual Dinner 2022

Reserve the Date!
Friday 18 November
Royal Thames Yacht Club Knightsbridge

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Have a look at the review in Gramaphone of the recent Dora Pejacevic concert.

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Nicholas Frankopan’s invitation to a Hrvatski Svjetski Kongres (UK) event at the Royal Thames Yacht Club on June 24 is attached below:

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Nicholas Jarrold, Chair of the British-Croatian Society, called on Tomislav Vlahutin to thank him for his support for the Society during his time as Cultural Counsellor at the Croatian Embassy in London. Nicholas presented him with a copper engraving of a View of the Monument with hand colouring by George Bickham published 12th. May 1794.

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2cellos are performing at Wembley on June 2 and 3.

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“Materiality and the Question of Authenticity in Yugoslav Memorial Landscapes” seminar

A message from Rui Gomes Coelho, Assistant Professor, Department of Archaeology, Durham University

Literary Translation workshop

The British Croatian Society is supporting the British Centre for Literary Translation workshop at the 2022 International Literary Translation and Creative Writing Summer School, University of East Anglia. 

You can find out more about the event by visiting the following website.

The workshop will be led by Ellen Elias-Bursać who has been translating prose since the 1980s, including writing by Daša Drndić and Dubravka Ugrešić. 

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On 13th January Ljerka Njers received an important award, for Life work, from ULUPUH, the Association of the Artists of Applied Arts of Croatia.

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Mediterranean Gardens

Next Friday, 14th January, at 8pm, BBC2, Monty Don will present his episode on Mediterranean Gardens, including Croatia.

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Vijenac

Here is a link to Vijenac of 16 December 2021 with a piece by our member Bojan Bujic on the London performance of a symphony by Dora Pejacevic. The article is in Croatian, but google translate may help you if you need an English version. 

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Dora Pejačević - Symphony in F-sharp minor

A major work by Dora Pejačević will be performed in the Barbican by the BBC Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Sakari Oramo, on 26th November. For more information, please see the link.

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calendarCroatia 2022 - a reminder

A reminder that we are again producing a British-Croatian Society calendar and look forward to receiving your photographs if you have not sent them already. 

We normally seek photographs taken in Croatia during the year. However, for 2022, given that not all of us may be able to visit Croatia, we would encourage you to look through photographs taken previously, even historic photographs, for possible inclusion in the exhibition and calendar. Photographs of winter in Croatia would be especially welcome.

Photographs can be landscape or portrait in as high a resolution as possible. Photographs should reach us no later than Wednesday 20 October 2021. 

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Uvod u anatomiju otoka 2012

Malcolm Hardy gave a lecture on Vis in 2012 about the events involving the island in 1812. You can watch it here.
Uvod u anatomiju otoka 2012 and then selecting Malcolm's talk (the 9th) among the 12 talks that are offered.

The introduction is in Croatian with the lecture in English.

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The International Trust for Croatian Monuments 
MARKING THE 30TH ANNIVERSARY OF OUR TRUST

You can read PROGRESS REPORT 2021 here.

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Archaeological Museum, Zagreb

It is not too late to make a donation to support the renewal of the Prehistory display at the Archaeological Museum in Zagreb. The closing date for donations is July 30.

Last year, following the earthquake in Zagreb, the British-Croatian Society and friends responded very enthusiastically and generously to our ‘adopt a clock appeal’ (for the restoration of the Colley Clock, one of the damaged exhibits of the Muzej umjetnost I obrt in Trg Republike Hrvatske). Not far away in Zrinjevac, the Archaeological Museum also suffered greatly in the quake and we are now appealing for your help to renew the Prehistory display.

The Director of the Archaeological Museum, Sanjin Mihelić reports, encouragingly, that he has been able to secure support for the restoration of many of the museum’s objects (ie Ancient Greek vases etc) through international professional and friendship links, but that ‘the Prehistory display will be the toughest task to manage, since there—at the 3rd floor of the Museum building—we are faced not only with probably the most serious constructional damage of all (most of which we hope will be covered by the insurance), but also with the fact that restoring the display to its pre-earthquake state would make no sense at all. Naturally, this means that we will need to create a new display, however, this is something we simply don’t have the sufficient means for.'

Some immediate post-earthquake photos of the 3rd floor are available also here.

The new display will not be a ‘quick ‘fix, but with your support we can help the Museum to make a start on this important step of re-construction.

Donations may be made as follows:

• by bank transfer to the British-Croatian Society a/c 60566500, Barclays Bank Oxford City Branch, sort code 20-65-18. Your donation should carry the reference Arch Mus.
• by cheque made payable to The British-Croatian Society sent to: David Davison, Treasurer, British-Croatian Society, 5 St Edward’s Court, Oakthorpe Road, Oxford OX2 7UP

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Statement from the Croatian Football Federation

On Thursday 10 June 2021, the Croatian Football Federation issued a statement explaining why the Croatian national team did not take the knee before the start of the friendly against Belgium in support of the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement and why it will not do so at the team's next games:

“The Croatian Football Federation and the Croatian national team strongly condemn any and all forms of discrimination. We also respect the right of every individual and every organisation to select the circumstances and the manner in which they will take a stand against racism and/or other forms of discrimination. 

The Croatian Football Federation believes that the players have a right to their own opinion on these topics, and that they also have a right to choose whether they want to engage in any activity. The players of the Croatian national team jointly decided ahead of the friendly match against Belgium that they will not take the knee, and they respectfully stood in silence during the kneeling of their Belgian colleagues. The Croatian Football Federation respects their stance on this and will not impose taking the knee as an obligation for Croatian players, as this gesture does not hold any symbolic ties to the fight against racism and discrimination in the context of Croatian culture and tradition.  

In general, we believe the most important thing is the fact that Croatian international players have conducted themselves respectfully throughout their careers and that they have shown through their behaviour that they respect all individuals, opponents, and teammates, regardless of race, religion, social status, ethnicity, or any other characteristic, which is a value that is also promoted by the Croatian Football Federation."

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Raising the Curtain on Early Klimt

Read an article about Klimt's association with Croatia and Rijeka in particular here. The article to be published in the June issue of Apollo Magazine

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Luka Boršić and Irena Radić Rossi will present
Liburnians and Illyrian Lembs: Iron Age Ships of the Eastern Adriatic
Archaeopress’s next webinar

Thursday 27^th May, 7pm BST (GMT+1) via Zoom

This free online lecture explores the origins of two types of ancient ship which appear in the written sources connected with the protohistoric eastern Adriatic area: the ‘Liburnian’ (liburna or liburnica) and the southern Adriatic (Illyrian) ‘lemb’. The relative abundance of written sources suggests that both ships played significant roles in ancient times, especially the Liburnian, which became the main type of light warship in early Roman imperial fleets and ultimately evolved into a generic name for warships in the Roman Imperial period and Late Antiquity.

Click here to register. Attendance is free, places are limited to 100.

Archaeopress published the book of the same title earlier this year www.archaeopress.com.

AMAC invites you to a talk about Ivan Rabuzin

Even though it is, once again, not possible to organise our annual meeting in person, we will have a virtual version of the event on Sunday, 9th of May at 11:00 am.

We are delighted to announce that Dr Svjetlana Sumpor will give a talk on the life and work of Ivan Rabuzin, and the opening of the Croatian Museum of Naïve Art.

The lecture will be followed by our annual meeting.

Please join us by following the link:
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/87679360959?pwd=QjRmVGZiZWp6NkN3MVkxU244MkpJQT09

Meeting ID: 876 7936 0959
Passcode: 145237

We hope you'll be able to attend and we very much looking forward to seeing you.

Yours, on behalf of the AMAC-UK, Neva Kandžija

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Petrinja Teacher Training College appeal

Lady Jadranka writes: Zana Matulic Bilac, a senior conservator/restorer from Split, sends us this SOS message. 

You can donate direct, following the instructions below, or you can send a donation to International Trust for Croatian Monuments, 34 Cadogan Square, London SW1X 0JL, when, if you are a tax-paying British citizen, the Trust will receive another 25% from British Government.

The evacuation of the library of the Petrinja Teacher Training College

In the catastrophic earthquake that hit the city of Petrinja and its surroundings on December 28 and 29 in 2020, the building of the Faculty of Teacher Education of the University of Zagreb, the location department in Petrinja, was among the severely damaged objects. The library of the Petrinja Teacher Training College was founded in the 1870s and annexed to the Faculty of Teacher Education in 2007. Today, the library has a fund of approximately 28,000 volumes, including 400 protected cultural property items. The archival material created at the Department includes personal files, student files, secretary and accounting files and other material. Due to the necessary reconstruction of the building, it is urgent to evacuate and store the library collection and archival material. Evacuation requires material for cleaning, packing, transport and storage.

Activities related to procuration and evacuation are voluntarily coordinated and organized by the IIC – Croatian Group. The association is one of the eight regional groups of the International Institute for Conservation (IIC) based in London. It has been operating in Croatia since 2009 as an association that brings together experts dealing with the protection of cultural heritage.

Following the unfortunate earthquakes beginning with the one hitting Zagreb in March 2000, the association is continuously focused on professional help and support for colleagues in Zagreb and damaged cultural heritage. Last year, a volunteer project was started at the Volunteers' Centre Zagreb with the aim of better organization and inclusion of experts and students who are not members of the association. After the earthquake that affected the Banovina area, the association expressed its readiness for professional volunteer assistance to the Conservation Department in Sisak. The new project was launched on February 10, 2021, the first major activity being the evacuation of the library in Petrinja led by the member Dragica Krstić, head of the Department for Preservation and Storage of the National and University Library in Zagreb.

As part of the initiative of the IIC – Croatian Group and the IIC headquarters, a fundraiser was started within the international professional community to gather funds for the necessary material. Payments will be made directly to the library through a temporary account opened for that purpose. Since the IIC – Croatian Group is a non-profit association, focused on professional activities, in this way the assistance of the association excludes the financial intermediation in the service of the best implementation.

Preparatory work is already finished and the cost estimates are prepared in collaboration with the senior librarian Andreja Tominac.

Payment details:

Recipient:
Faculty of Teacher Education
University of Zagreb
Savska cesta 77
10 000 Zagreb
Croatia

IBAN: HR9124020061500080595
Model: HR00
Call number: 010321
Purpose of payment: Pomoć - knjižnica UFZG

Payments are to be made before March 1, 2021.

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Earthquakes Benefit Concert - New date

NERHT - New Europe Railway Heritage Trust

In summer 2020 BCS members Robert and Suzanna Dolata were shown round a hugely ambitious Croatian Railway Preservation Society enthusiasts’ project to reopen a railway line through the scenic Raša Valley in Istria closed in 2002.

A British based railway heritage organisation is advising the promoter Neil Vlacic, a Scotsman living in Labin. The project is currently in the process of being registered in Croatia as a voluntary society.

One of NERHT's supporters James Waite has written a book on narrow gauge railways in former Yugoslavia, see flyer. If you know anyone who might be interested in this work, perhaps you'll let them know about it.

The Istria project concerns the heavy standard gauge railway between the coast at Rabac and Buzet. It served the coal mine at Labin, but closed along with the mine in 2002. Track is in good condition – mostly, and buildings are generally intact. Regional and local government authorities favour the idea because of potential to revive engineering industries and generate inland tourism – think of great interest and economic benefits of preserved railways in England.

We will report developments. If you are a railway enthusiast, have a look at NEHRT web page and the attached leaflet about bygone Narrow Gauge Lines.

Robert Dolata

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Weʼre raising £10,000 to Help with Urgent Renovation work to the Croatian Catholic Mission in London.

I have raised 61% online and a further 10% offline.  It would be fabulous to get to the full amount with the support of the broad range of the Croatian community involved as well?

JustGiving link

Nicholas Frankopan

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Kazalište Planet Art

Tomislav Vlahutin has brought to our attention the online theatre production project of Kazalište Planet Art from Zagreb that may be of interest to our Croatian speakers.

'Obraćam Vam se vezano uz novi projekt Kazališta Planet Art – Online kazalište uživo kojim se uživo, online streamingom prenose kazališne predstave na hrvatskom jeziku što je, vjerujem, zanimljivo hrvatskim iseljenicima i hrvatskim manjinskim zajednicama diljem svijeta. 

Projekt je nastao kao odgovor na korona krizu, no ujedno je otvorio mogućnost da na ovaj način predstave mogu gledati po cijelom svijetu svi oni koji nemaju mogućnost fizički prisustvovati kazališnim predstavama na hrvatskom jeziku, a željeli bi to.

Predstave se online prenose s 4 kamere, prilagođene su TV i online mediju čime postaju, kako ih gledatelji opisuju 'kombinacijom kazališta i filma', a za cijenu ulaznice od 39 kuna (cca. 6 USD $) predstave može gledati cijela obitelj.

U ponudi su tri hit komedije Kazališta Planet Art: Velika Zvjerka, Tko je ovdje lud? i Ritina škola koje se tim redoslijedom izmjenjuju nedjeljom u 20h po hrvatskom vremenu.

Riječ je o predstavama koje su među najizvođenijima u Hrvatskoj u posljednjih desetak godina.

Inače, Kazalište Planet Art jedno je od najuspješnijih i najnagrađivanijih kazališta u Hrvatskoj u posljednjih petnaest godina, prepoznato po svojoj kvaliteti, a u njemu igraju prva imena hrvatskog glumišta.

U attachu Vam šaljem opširniji tekst o projektu s vizualima iz predstava, a još opširnije sve informacije možete naći na ovoj web stranici .

Puno hvala!'

Marko Torjanac
Kazalište Planet Art
Vlaška 70a
gsm: + 385 91 1007 967
e-mail: [email protected]

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‘Adopt a Clock’ project

The British-Croatian Society has supported the ‘adopt a clock’ project to help the Museum of Arts and Crafts (Muzej za umjetnosti i obrt) in Zagreb. The project helps to restore some of the damage to the exhibits by the earthquake. One of the damaged clocks has an early 18th century movement by Richard Colley, an ‘eminent maker’ from one of the great periods of London clockmaking, in a slightly later German rococo case.  The Society has limited funds but we responded by ‘adopting’ this clock with a British connection by contributing towards the cost of the restoration of the Colley movement. The restored clock features in an exhibition at the Museum and the support from the British-Croatian Society is acknowledged.

As this year the Society has been unable to hold its annual dinner at which each year money is raised for a deserving project in Croatia, the Society is encouraging its members to consider making a donation towards the costs of repairing the Richard Colley clock mechanism. If you wish to add to the Society’s support, please email [email protected] for details of how you can do so.

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Zagreb Loves You

In the last almost two months, we have really had the opportunity to see that we are not alone and that our fellow citizens, as well as our visitors or those who are yet to come to us, love ...

https://youtu.be/txZgLExm-vg

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We should never take our daily bread for granted
Anne Sebba reviews Our Daily Bread by Predrag Matvejevic in The Spectator

We should never take our daily bread for granted
In a moving combination of memoir and meditation, Predrag Matvejevic describes how a smuggled loaf to a starving PoW proved a life-saver

"In the seventh and final chapter of this small but lingeringly powerful book, the author reveals his motivation for writing it. His father, he explains, a Russian-born Yugoslav soldier, had been a prisoner of war of the Germans, part of a group consigned to do forced labour felling trees during the bitterly cold winter of 1942-43. One evening, freezing, starving and looking barely human, the group was stopped on the road back to camp by a stranger, a Protestant pastor who invited them into his house and, risking reprisals, nonetheless gave them a chance to warm up and eat some bread with a glass of wine."

Read more.

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'Poezija u gradu' 2020
A project in celebration of the poet August Senoa

Obavještavamo Vas da je danas, točno sedam mjeseci od zagrebačkog potresa, počeo projekt „Poezija u gradu“ u spomen velikanu  hrvatske  književnosti  Augustu Šenoi. S poštovanjem i zahvalnošću u spomen ovom jedinstvenom književnom velikanu građani će na deset osvjetljenih citylight površina u gradu moći čitati neke od njegovih najljepših pjesama: Zagrebu, Tri riječi, Budi svoj, Sunce i zvijezde i Srce pjesnikovo.

August Šenoa umro je u 43. godini života od posljedica upale pluća od koje je obolio kada je uz predan i intenzivan književni rad i kao požrtvovni gradski vijećnik po hladnoći skrbio za unesrećene u velikom zagrebačkom potresu 1880. godine.

Više informacija i fotografije nalaze se u prilogu.
Unaprijed zahvaljujemo na praćenju.

Kontak:
Sonja Zubović, 091 5846 478, [email protected]

PROJEKT „POEZIJA U GRADU“ U SPOMEN VELIKANU
HRVATSKE KNJIŽEVNOSTI AUGUSTU ŠENOI

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The International Trust for Croatian Monuments 
Progress Report 2020

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calendarCroatia 2021

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‘Zagreb’s museums and historic sites are suffering severely’
An article by Sir Timothy Clifford from the Apollo

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calendarCroatia 2021

If you manage to travel to Croatia this summer, remember we would like your photographs for calendarCroatia 2021. If travelling is not going to be possible this year, why not enjoy looking through your photographs taken in Croatia over the years and email some of your happy memories to us for the calendar?

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What is a School? 

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Earthquake Hits Zagreb

The article is taken from the July/August 2020 edition of Minerva magazine, copyright rests with the magazine. For information about the magazine please go to minervamagazine.com.

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Free Books for BCS Members

Celia Hawkesworth has given the following brand new books to the British-Croatian Society for passing on to our members. If you would like a copy, please email in response - they will be allocated on a 'first come, first served basis' and available for collection at British-Croatian Society events (or can be posted to you if you are not in the London area).

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International Trust for Croatian Monuments Progress Report 2019

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Talk Given by Flora Turner

In search of art for Croatia Lecture BCS 12. 6. 2019.

You can view images here.

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Britanski Channel 4 na obilježavanju 110 godina turizma u Kaštelima u Veleposlanstvu RH u Londonu

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calendarCroatia 2020 

Renata Pokupic at the Wigmore Hall

Has  pleasure in inviting you to the Annual Charity Concert in support of Awards for Croatian Young Scientists

Vitaly Pisarenko - Piano

Programme to be announced

Saturday 23th February 2019, 7.30 pm 

Followed by drinks and canapés

33 Frognal, London NW3 6YD

Courtesy of Tony and Gabrijela Suchy

Tickets £30

RSVP with cheques payable to AMAC UK send to:

Zrinka Mikelić Bottrill, 23 Independent Place, London E8 2HE or bank transfer to: AMAC UK, account 00443076 at Lloyds Bank, sort code 30-94-04, quoting your name as reference

Doppelgänger, E.E.G. and Belladonna

Since some of us last met at Conway Hall, there’s been a flurry of coverage for Doppelgänger and E.E.G. But we are thrilled, first of all, to share news that some of you may not know: Belladonna won the Warwick Prize for Women in Translation at an award ceremony last Tuesday at the Warwick Arts Centre. Many congratulations to Celia!

The Financial Times ran a brilliant review of E.E.G. by Eileen Battersby: “Funny, angry, informed and intent on the truth, no voice is quite as beautiful as that of Daša Drndić”

Boyd Tonkin has written a profile of Daša and an excellent review of Belladonna in online culture mag The Arts Desk: You can read it here

And a review of  Doppelgänger on the Rough Ghosts blog here

Katharina wrote a piece about Dasa for Granta’s online feature, Editor’s Chair.

E.E.G was reviewed in the Daily Mail, and it’s not absolutely clear that the reviewer liked the book at all . . . If you like, you can read it here

We also expect a review in the Guardian and White Review, and more besides.

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Register for Croatian Subjects outside Croatia

Central State Office for Croats Abroad invites Croatian subjects to sign the Register for Croatian Subjects outside Croatia.This is a digital base and communication net.

Info letak Registar hrvatskih subjekata izvan Republike Hrvatske

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Berislav Unveils the Eye-Popping Video to the First Part of his Catharsis Trilogy

Berislav is a Croatian dancer, actor, model and singer, whose output is utterly unique, with no greater evidence of this than his incredible video to his track I Gave My Life.

By the age of 9 he had developed a love for dancing and started attending Tihana Škrinjarić school of dance before a move to Austria saw his dancing talent develop yet further. At the age of 18 he returned to Zagreb where he began a modelling career and embarked on numerous projects with Croatian music artists as well as participating in theatrical productions such as Hair.

Determined to be the very best at everything he was involved with he moved briefly to Los Angeles to attend the Sanford Meisner acting school in 2012, leading to acting roles in TV series and a number of commercials. Having signed a record deal with Croatia Records in 2015, he enjoyed his first full forays into recorded music, his first single being “Singing that Rock n Roll”, a cover of a song previously recorded by Stijene and featuring what has now become something of a trademark lavish and theatrical video.

Bringing the story bang up to date, Berislav has forged a partnership with James Perri (aka Jimi Polo), the producer known for his work with David Guetta and Daft Punk, and the two of them started collaborating fully in 2017, the first fruits of which is “I Gave My Life”. The track is the first part of the trilogy, the beginning of a journey, the clash between life and death and also features in the documentary film, 14 Barriers about a Croatian War veteran. The accompanying video is a tour de force of action, emotion and, in the very truest sense of the word, fantastic visuals.

Berislav acts as an Art Director for Taja fashion brand since 2003 and is the owner of an exclusive Health Club.

www.berislav.eu

 

www.quitegreat.co.uk

calendarCroatia 2019

Now that the holiday season is coming to an end, it is time to remind you that we would like to see your photographs for the 2019 calendarCroatia and exhibition.

We invite you to submit photographs in preparation for the British-Croatian Society's next calendarCroatia.

The calendar will be printed and for sale in November. There will be a launch party to which all photographers will be invited.

We are looking for photographs that show Croatia in all its variety, not only as a beautiful place for a holiday. Photographs are invited from professionals and amateurs of any nationality, in as high a resolution as possible. People, places, abstract - all subjects and techniques are welcome.

Please note that if you want your photographs to the considered for the printed calendar, they will need to be landscape format photographs. For the exhibition, photographs can be landscape or portrait.

High quality photographs can be taken on a smart phone, so please tell your family and friends about calendarCroatia 2019.

You can send up to 4 of your photographs, with the photographer's name and the title of the photographs, to us at [email protected].

Let us have your photographs as soon as you can, but not later than October 20.

If you have any questions, you can also contact us at this address [email protected]

 

calendarCroatia 2017 options

Collection in person £8.00 GBP Post and package for the UK £8.00 GBP Post and package for anywhere else £12.00 GBP

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The International Trust for Croatian Monuments

You can see progress report for the International Trust for Croatian Monuments here.

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Yugoslavia's Lost Utopias

New York's MoMA has a magnificent exhibition entitled Yugoslavia's Lost Utopias covering the country's monumental postwar architecture. It has been reviewed in this weekend's Financial Times. You may not be able to travel to see it, but the Financial Times article and other reviews are available online.

Information about a production of Tena Stivicic's 3 Winters

The update from "The Cells that Unite us: the Story of a Fortunate Immigrant"

British Croatian Society members had an amazing opportunity to attend talk by Dr Gabrijela Kocjan on 22 May 2018 at the Jubilee Room of House of Commons.

The aim of the talk was to raise awareness of the contribution that Croatian immigrants make to the UK and to confirm that immigration benefits not just the migrants themselves, but also the UK. 

Here are the links to text and the presentation from the talk.

Olja Savičević
Farewell, Cowboy

General Meeting

You are invited to the Annual General Meeting of the British-Croiatian Society to be held at 18-30 on January 24 in the Croatian Embassy 21 Conway Street, London W1T 6BN.

Cambridge Society of Croatia

I run the Cambridge Society of Croatia.  We are currently updating our records for all alumni of the University who either are Croatian or live in Croatia or (even) have an interest in Croatia.   

We have just started a facebook page which can be found here.

Nicholas Frankopan

[email protected]

07818892524
0207 193 8901

• sending a cheque to Peter Elborn, British-Croatian Society,
  5 Well Road, London NW3 1LH
• by bank transfer to The British Croatian Society, account 60566500 at Barclays Oxford City Centre branch, sort code 20-65-18, quoting your name as reference.

Help us find the missing Bukovac

Please see the attached newspaper item 'Help us find the missing Bukovac'.

“LOUDEST SILENT FILM” TO HOLD UK PREMIERE IN HULL

The International Trust for Croatian Monuments 
Progress Report

A reminder of the British-Croatian Society's calendarCroatia 2018

We invite you to send us photographs taken in 20017 in Croatia for a Christmas / New Year card, an exhibition and for a 2018 calendar.

25 photographs will be selected to feature in the calendar. One photograph will be selected for the Christmas / New Year card. In addition we will feature some 40 photographs in an exhibition to be held at the gallery of the Croatian Embassy in London on November 30.  Calendars and cards will be available for purchase at the British-Croatian Society's annual dinner on November 23, at the exhibition opening and online.

We are looking for photographs that show Croatia in all its variety, not only as a scenically beautiful place for a holiday. Photographs are invited from professionals and amateurs of any nationality, in as high a resolution as possible. People, places, abstract - all subjects and techniques are welcome.   High quality photographs can be taken on a smart phone, so please tell your family and friends about calendarCroatia 2018.

Please send up to 4 of your photographs with the photographer's name and the title of the photographs to us at [email protected].

Let us have your photographs as soon as you can, but not later than October 20.
If you have any questions, you can also contact us at this address.
Here is the information for the latest THIRTEEN photographic exhibition. 

News from the Nemon Studio, Boars Hill near Oxford

MEETING G2.3

Attached is an invitation letter (Croatian and English version) for the conference ‘MEETING G2.3 – CROATIA, FULL OF BUSINESS POTENTIAL’ that will take place on 6 - 8 November this year in Zagreb at the FORUM Zagreb congress centre.

Lit Link Festival

The Lit Link Festival in Croatia is a three-day tour whose participants are writers, editors and publishers. This year the motto of the Lit Link Festival is “Despite Brexit” and the guests are British writers, editors and publishers. At previous festivals, guests have come from the following countries: 2013 – USA; 2014 – Canada; 2015 – France; 2016 – Italy. The festival consists of three evening readings in which both Croatian authors and British authors participate. Translations are completed beforehand and will be projected onto a large screen during the readings. The readings will take place in the northern coastal cities of Pula (29th June, Centar Rojc) and Rijeka (30th June, Astronomski centar), as well as the inland capital, Zagreb (1st July, Club Močvara/Mochvara).

This is a conservation project led by Jurica Matijevic, Art Academy, Split, nine devoted young people, doing excellent work. We hope that the workshop will develop into an international project, like the one on Lopud.

BREXIT

The design of biology and robotics - Mirko Kovac

A discussion at the Royal Institution of the increasingly connected fields of science and design. This event will feature Daisy Ginsberg's multi-disciplinary work in synthetic biology and a talk from Mirko Kovac about how nature is influencing the design of aerial robots. 

May 10, 7.00pm to 9.30pm

For more information, please go to: www.rigb.org

Mirko Kovac is director of the Aerial Robotics Laboratory at the Aeronautics Department at Imperial College London. His research interest is the conception and implementation of novel mobility solutions for robotics and agent based autonomous manufacturing. Before his appointment in London, he was post-doctoral researcher at at Harvard University and he obtained his PhD at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology. He has delivered keynote lectures and talks on bio-inspired robotics at leading research institutions and conferences world wide. He is also advisor to the UK government on the topic of aerial robotics and is regularly consulting on technology foresight and strategy development for industry. 

Ambassador Andrew Dalgleish on Brexit and rights of UK citizens in Croatia

https://youtu.be/585WBofEktY

Poziv

International Summer Music School Pucisca

More information here.

International Summer Music School Pucisca taking place on the Island of Brac.

International conservation workshop on the island of Lopud.
Please see attached article.

Vuk Eisen, an active member of the British-Croatian Society, died last year. Below is the text of the address Tim Eisen gave at his father's memorial service.

Hrvatska matica iseljenika

Hrvatska matica iseljenika i ove godine organizira svoje tradicionalne ljetne programe koji podrazumijevaju ucenje hrvatskoga jezika i kulture: Sveucilisnu skolu hrvatskoga jezika i kulture i Malu skolu hrvatskoga jezika i kulture. Također, u proljetnome semestru (6. ozujka 2017.) nastavljamo s provođenjem Hrvatskog internetskog tecaja HiT-1.

U privitku Vam saljemo kratke obavijesti.

Molimo Vas da ovu informaciju proslijedite svima za koje smatrate da bi bili zainteresirani. Detaljne informacije o ovim programima, kao i o ostalim programima i aktivnostima Hrvatske matice iseljenika, nalaze se na nasoj mreznoj stranici www.matis.hr.

Zahvaljujuci na suradnji, srdacno pozdravljam.

Lada Kanajet Šimić, prof.

HRVATSKA MATICA ISELJENIKA
Odjel za školstvo, znanost i šport
Dept. of Education, Science and Sport
Trg S. Radića 3, 10000 Zagreb, Croatia

tel: 385 1 61 15 116, fax: 385 1 61 11 522
e-mail: [email protected]

The fourth Croatian World Games are to be held in the Croatian capital Zagreb from 18-22 July 2017 with a global participation of more than 800 Croats from over 35 nations. Croatian World Games are amateur competitions where participants are Croats and their descendants throughout the world representing the country that they live in now.

Croatian World Games previously held in Zadar in 2006 and 2010 and in Zagreb in 2014, are organised by the Croatian World Congress and the State Office For Croats Abroad, in association with other Croatian institutions and associations in Croatia and among the Croatian diasporas.

All Croats wherever they may be are invited to participate in the Croatian World Games which include multiple sports disciplines; athletics, bowls, judo, karate, basketball, football, indoor soccer, volleyball, beach volleyball, swimming, rugby, handball, tennis, table tennis, taekwondo and water polo.

Our wish is for a great number of participants, as well as representatives of the Croatian organisations worldwide, to take the opportunity to compete in sports, and to share companionship and participate in numerous cultural and entertainment events that will contribute towards strengthening of their ties with the Republic of Croatia and enhancing of their sense of belonging to the Croatian people.

If you wish to take part in the upcoming Croatian World Games please visit the following link to register by 1 April 2017.

Nostalgic Journey with Frano Lasić and klapa Smrika

A humanitarian concert for the homeless children of Dubrovnik and Belgrade will take place at the Cadogan Hall in London on April 2 - details in the attachment or from Cadogan Hall.

Annual General Meeting

Please hold in your diaries:

Tuesday 21 February 2017 1830 – 2030
for the Annual General Meeting of the British Croatian Society.

The Agenda for the meeting will follow.
Robert Dolata
Secretary

NIMBUS CD recording of NICHOLAS JACKSON’S OPERA THE ROSE AND THE RING 

‘Bijelo Dugme’ concert

There will be a ‘Bijelo Dugme’ concert at Hammersmith Apollo Theatre in Feb 23rd 

http://www.eventimd

School of Croatian Language and Culture ‘Šibenik’

Information about the School of Croatian Language and Culture ‘Šibenik’, intended for the Croatian diaspora and Croatian students, is in the attachment, or can be viewed on the website www.sv-lovre.com.

(For children aged 3 - 7)

A musical rendition of this charming story of how Hedgemond defends his humble house, while teaching us a lesson about caring for what we love.
Presented by Istros books and the children of the Croatian Saturday School, London.

William Goodenough House
35-42 Mecklenburgh Square, London WC1N 2AN
October 23, 12 noon & 2pm, Tickets: £3
BOOK YOUR TICKETS HERE
Telephone: 020 3108 1000 Mon - Fri, 12noon - 6pm

The Art Newspaper

Croatian heritage has a friend in Britain

Over the past 25 years, the International Trust for Croatian Monuments has raised more than £500,000 to repair the ravages of war.

Read more here.

Lunchtime Lecture: Ivan Meštrović, Croatian Sculptor and his portraits

Flora Turner-Vucetic looks at the art and life of Ivan Mestrovic (1883 – 1962), Croatian sculptor, painter, draughtsman, architect, writer and poet through a discussion of his portraits. In partnership with the Society of Portrait Sculptors.

17 November 2016, 13:15
Ondaatje Wing Theatre, National Portrait Gallery
Tickets: £3 (£2 concessions and Gallery Supporters) Book online, or visit the Gallery in person.
Doors open at 12.45. Lectures begin at 13.15 and last approximately one hour.

Ivan Meštrović (1883 – 1962) from an early age gained a significant international artistic reputation exhibiting at major exhibitions in Vienna, Paris, Prague, Rome, London, Zagreb and New York in the first decades of the twentieth century. His one man show in 1915 at the Victoria and Albert Museum was a sensational event received by public and critics with great acclaim. He also inspired a discussion between the modernists and traditionalists and even raising doubts in some quarters about the effect of his nudes on public morals. He became a celebrity with much demand for his portrait sculpture. One of the early acquisitions by what eventually became known as the Tate Gallery was a very important “Deposition from the Cross”. Michael Sadler, Rector of theLeeds School of Art, wrote in 1915: “In you, we salute the greatest sculptor of religious sculpture since the Renaissance”. Meštrović donated his self-portrait in plaster for the collection. Flora Turner-Vučetić revives the memory of the art and life of this exceptional artist through a discussion of his portraits which were in many cases an expression of his respect and admiration for his subjects.

Flora Turner-Vučetić is an art historian, museum curator, diplomat, journalist and writer. She has worked as a Senior Curator in the Museum of Arts and Crafts in Zagreb, a broadcast journalist and editor at the Croatian Section of the BBC World Service, London, and as Counsellor for cultural, scientific and educational affairs at the Embassy of the Republic of Croatia in London. She was one of the founders and a past Chairman of the British-Croatian Society and remains a Trustee. She is presently a writer, freelance journalist and researcher. She has organised numerous exhibitions in the UK and regularly publishes mainly on visual arts and British Croatian artistic and cultural relations, as for example Mapping Croatia in United Kingdom Collections, Archaeopress, Oxford, 2013. She contributed to the symposium about Ivan Meštrović at the Victoria and Albert Museum in 2015 and to the special isssue of the Sculpture Journal dedicated to Meštrović in 2016.

A defining moment in European and transatlantic resilience: Croatian perspectives

Kolinda Grabar-Kitarović, the President of the Republic of Croatia, will speak at LSEE on Tuesday, 11 October. The talk is entitled: "A defining moment in European and transatlantic resilience: Croatian perspectives". The event is free and open to all but registration is required. Register for the event here.

Our mailing address is:
London School of Economics
Houghton Street, London, London WC2A 2AE

LSEE Visiting Speaker Programme, Wednesday 12 October

Croatia's Lost Generation? Youth unemployment, education and training in Croatia since the crisis

Spaker: Dr Iva Tomić, Institute of Economics, Zagreb
Chaired by Dr Vassilis Monastiriotis, LSEE Research on SEE, LSE European Institute

Dr Iva Tomić holds a tenure-track affiliation as a Research Associate at the Institute of Economics, Zagreb in Croatia. She was awarded a PhD degree in Economics from the University of Ljubljana, Slovenia in 2013. Her main research interests are labour economics, applied microeconomics and public finances. During her visit at LSEE she will be working on youth unemployment issues in European countries, with a special emphasis on the Croatian case and its cross comparison with other Southern European countries.

Read more about the event here.

Date: Wednesday, 12 October 2016
Time: 18:00 - 19:30
Venue: Canada Blanch room, 1st floor, Cowdray House (COW), London School of Economics, London WC2A 2AE (LSE Campus Map)
The event operates on a first come, first served basis.

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All the Best - Croatian romantic comedy

Attached you will find a press release about the UK premiere of a Croatian romantic comedy "All the Best” directed by Snjezana Tribuson to be screened at the forthcoming Raindance Film Festival in London.

Photos and press release.

London Film Festival
Croatian films at the London Film Festival and Raindance

On the Other Side - S one strane
A middle-aged nurse in Zagreb receives an unwelcome phone call in this profound analysis unspoken fears and disguised trauma. Vesna is a middle aged nurse living in Zagreb with two grown up children – her son Vladimir, a married businessman with one son, and her daughter Jadranka, a law graduate who is about to be married. One day, Vesna receives a phone call from her husband Žarko in Belgrade. Neither Vlado nor Jadranka, who have had to hide their surnames, want to see him. After all, he appears to have been convicted of war crimes. But repeated phone calls between Vesna and Žarko edges them towards resurrecting their relationship. Dealing with the psychological aftermath of war, Zrinko Ogresta’s film is comprised of stately camera movements and carefully composed images, focusing on Vesna’s face and the spaces around her. He creates an introspective mood that perfectly captures the feelings of his characters. The result is a profound analysis of absence and of disguised trauma, of unspoken fears and their effects on a new generation.

Monday 10 October 2016 20:45
Vue West End Cinema, Screen 7

If you wish to keep in touch with what is happening and would like to join our email list, please email [email protected]

The Bromley Guitar Society presents a classical guitar recital by the internationally renowned Croatian guitarist Zoran Dukic on Saturday 15th October 2016 at 7.30pm. This recital will mark his UK debut. He will be playing at St Mark's Church,Westmoreland Rd,Bromley, BR2 0TB. A few minutes walk from Bromley South Station.

Advance adult tickets £12.50. £14 on the door (cash only).

For more information about Zoran and how to obtain tickets, please visit: bromleyguitarsociety.blogspot.co.uk. Online tickets are available from the 26th August.

Contact us: [email protected]

Meet-Up

The next British Croatian Society Meet-Up takes place on Thursday 22 September 2016.
We will be meeting at a new venue, the Zander Bar in St. James’ Court Hotel, Westminster.

The intention is for people with any form of interest in Croatia to meet up, socialise and have a chat in an informal atmosphere. Whether you are a Croatian resident in London or someone who has recently visited Croatia for the first time and want to know more, this event is for you.

The event is of course open to both members and non-members. It provides an excellent opportunity for anyone to come and meet British-Croatian Society members and even to join if they so wish!

We have a reserved area on the left hand side of the bar. BCS members Brian Gallagher and John Pindar will be there from the start and you can find us by looking out for Croatian symbols.

Please note the Zander Bar is more formally known as the Bank Westminster and Zander Bar.
You should use the entrance to the right of the hotel, marked Bank Westminster.

We’ll be there between 7.30 PM and 10 PM.

Come along for a chat about all things Croatian!

Address: 45 Buckingham Gate, London SW1E 6BS (Our venue is identifiable by four large flags)

Nearest Tube stations: St James Park (District/Circle line). Follow exit signs for Palmer Street, ignore those for Broadway.

For full location details click here.

We will shortly be sending you details of the 2016 annual dinner, but in the meantime you may like to make a note of the date - November 4.

I, WHO HAVE HANDS MORE INNOCENT at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival.

The performance is based on the works of Vesna Parun, exploring her autobiographical works to give a chilling insight into the aspects of women's lives challenged by the patriarchal men of the Balkans. Performed by Vesna Tominac Matacic and directed by Ivan Leo Lemo, the piece is performed fully in Croatian with English subtitles and it has been gaining interest as a celebration of Vesna Parun's magnificent poetry and works.

http://www.hrt.hr/enz/vijesti- iz-kulture/

I, WHO HAVE HANDS MORE INNOCENT is performed daily until the 28th August at 19:25-20:35, this performance is at Zoo Venues 140 Pleasance Road Edinburgh EH8 9RR.

Tickets information

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Croatian majorette team

A Croatian majorette team from Orebić is competing at the 2016 European Majorette Championships in Crawley on 8-9 October.

They are a team composed of 26 girls and boys at the ages between 6-8 years.

They are asking for financial support in order to be able to participate at this event (covering travel, accommodation expenses).

If you think you might be able to help, please contact:
Sanda Menkadžiev at [email protected] m.hr

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Utopian Collective

The inaugural London Design Biennale opens in September at Somerset House with over 30 countries presenting newly commissioned works exploring the theme Utopia by Design.

A new collective of 8 Croatian designers ‘Utopian Collective’ are collaborating to create an interdisciplinary platform that looks at the role of design in society and as a catalyst for change. They also explore the experimentation inherent to collaborative work which encourages evolution.

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The play that is Oscar Wild

Jagoda Kamov is a Croatian actress who will perform in an Oscar Wild Play 'The play that is Oscar Wild' as a part of Camden Fringe festival. Click here for more details.

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Croatia and Brexit

The Government of the Republic of Croatia regrets the outcome of the British referendum in which a majority of voters supported the option of the UK leaving the European Union. Croatia will work to create a stronger and democratic European Union together with other member states, and will continue to further develop bilateral relations with the United Kingdom.

The legal status of Croatian citizens living and working in the UK will not change for a considerable time. There are no changes in travel regulations. The Croatian Embassy in London will provide information about any new important changes. You can contact the Embassy by writing to: [email protected]

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Southgate Opera present Bizet's tragic tale of passion set in the sultry atmosphere of southern Spain. Sung in English with full orchestral accompaniment. Tenor Stephen Cviic takes the role of Don Jose in the performances on Wednesday 8^th and Friday 10^th June.

Multilingual Imaginations: Celebrating Asymptote’s 5th Anniversary in London

Here is a write-up of the Asymptote anniversary event with Tena Štivičić

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The Concrete Utopia. Ivan Picelj and New Tendencies 1961-1973

Thu 26th May 2016 to Fri 22nd Jul 2016
Cortesy Gallery 41 & 43 Maddox Street, London W1S 2PD
Monday – Friday: 10am – 6pm, Saturday: 12pm – 6pm
Admission free

Cortesi Gallery is delighted to present The Concrete Utopia: Ivan Picelj and New Tendencies 1961–1973, an exhibition that explores the neo avant-garde of the sixties and seventies via the work of Croatian artist Ivan Picelj (1924–2011). As one of the founders of the New Tendencies movement, Picelj’s work presents a fascinating opportunity to re-examine this exciting period.

Curated by Ilaria Bignotti, the retrospective features more than 40 works by Picelj, retracing the significant developments of one of the movement’s leading figures. Picelj is renowned for his persistent pursuit of the perfect relationship between perception and knowledge. Through his rigorous ideation and infinite patience for repetition, his forms become a concrete utopia, created as a better way to see, feel and experience the everyday in life.

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Meet-Up

The next Meet-Up takes place on Wednesday 18 May.

We will be meeting at the National Theatre (downstairs) on the South Bank. There has been a recent refurbishment of the bar area which of course also serves tea and coffee.

The intention is for people with any form of interest in Croatia to meet up, socialise and have a chat in an informal atmosphere. Whether you are a Croatian resident in London or someone who has recently visited Croatia for the first time and want to know more, this event is for you.

The event is of course open to both members and non-members. It provides an excellent opportunity for anyone to come and meet British-Croatian Society members and even to join if they so wish!

We hope to bag a table early on in the bar area on the ground floor. BCS members Brian Gallagher and John Pindar will be there from the start and you can find us by looking out for Croatian symbols.

We’ll be there between 7.30 PM and 10 PM.

Come along for a chat about all things Croatian!

National Theatre: Upper Ground, South Bank
Nearest Tube stations: Embankment, Waterloo
Full location details: http://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk

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The THIRTEEN

The THIRTEEN will exhibit at the Croatian Embassy, 21 Conway Street, London W1T 6BN from May 20 to June 30.

THIRTEEN is an outstanding group of professional and accomplished amateur photographers.

Private view May 20, 18-30 - 20-30.

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World Premiere of William Thackeray opera

Sir Nicholas Jackson composes new opera based on William Thackeray’s The Rose and the Ring,

First public performance will take place at Thackeray’s old school at The Charterhouse in the centre of London in May

Composer Sir Nicholas Jackson will be conducting his latest work, The Rose and the Ring on Wednesday 4 May at Drapers livery Hall, followed by the first public performance at The Charterhouse, London on Thursday 5 May. The opera, based on the novel by William Thackeray will include an array of young and exciting singers, including Kathleen Ferrier finalist Robyn Parton. They will be joined by the ‘Concertante of London’, led byMadeleine Easton, who has recently performed with the ‘English Baroque’ soloists and the ‘King’s Consort’.

The Rose and the Ring is based on one of Thackeray’s lesser known works, located in the fictional kingdom of Pafflagonia. Magic, royalty and romance dominate the themes of Thackeray’s novel. For Nicholas, it was an obvious choice for an opera, “My Grandfather had known Thackeray’s daughter and one day when rummaging through some books that I had inherited I came across a worn copy of her father’s The Rose & the Ring. Although written as a ‘children’s pantomime’ it is an equally good read for grown-ups with ingenious twists, I just couldn’t believe that this had not occurred to anybody else”.

The score is set to adaptations and orchestrations of Keyboard Sonatas by Scarlatti, a composer whose sonatas Sir Nicholas has had a long affiliation with. “As a harpsichordist I had performed and recorded about 40 of his sonatas and played through a great many more. I had also recently recorded for Nimbus my arrangement of one of his sonatas for Wind Quartet and Harpsichord. It has been said that all the sounds that Scarlatti would have heard, if he had opened a window of his house in 18^th century Madrid, are contained in the microcosm of his 550 sonatas including flamenco dancing, castanets, the strumming of guitars and the wail of gypsy laments. But the gaiety of his music is sometimes overwhelmed by a surge of operatic passion.”

The public premiere of this work will be staged at The Charterhouse (5 May) in the very same building Thackeray would have visited daily during his time at the school in the 19^thcentury. On 7 May the cast will be recording the work in its entirety to be released later in the year. It will undoubtedly highlight Jackson’s knowledgeable interpretation of Scarlatti as well as his dedication to raising the profile of exciting young artists.

http://jacksonmusic.co.uk/

For ticket reservations (10am-3pm Monday - Friday) please contact Dawn Woodford at The Charterhouse on 0207 253 9503, Ext. 2

For press enquiries, please contact:
Valerie Barber PR
Suite 2
9a St John’s Wood High Street
London NW8 7NG

Tel: +44 (0)20 7586 8560

[email protected]
www.vbpr.co.uk

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Meet-Up

Our next Meet-Up takes place on Wednesday 23 March.

We will be meeting the National Theatre (downstairs) on the South Bank. There has been a recent refurbishment of the bar area which of course also serves tea and coffee.

The intention is for people with any form of interest in Croatia to meet up, socialise and have a chat in an informal atmosphere. Whether you are a Croatian resident in London or someone who has recently visited Croatia for the first time and want to know more, this event is for you.

The event is of course open to both members and non-members. It provides an excellent opportunity for anyone to come and meet British-Croatian Society members and even to join if they so wish!

We hope to bag a table early on in the bar area on the ground floor. BCS members Brian Gallagher and John Pindar will be there from the start and you can find us by looking out for Croatian symbols.

We’ll be there between 7.30 PM and 10 PM.

Come along for a chat about all things Croatian!

National Theatre: Upper Ground, South Bank
Nearest Tube stations: Embankment, Waterloo
Full location details: www.nationaltheatre.org.uk

Music for Holy Week

Monday 21 March, 7.30pm, St Paul’s Church, Covent Garden, Bedford Street, London, WC2E 9ED

The Elysian Singers, including tenor Stephen Cviic, conducted by Sam Laughton, present five centuries of penitential psalm settings from all around Europe: from France to Estonia, from Italy to Denmark. Mini-masterpieces by Mendelssohn (‘Hear my Prayer’) and Arvo Pärt (‘An den Wassern zu Babel’) rub shoulders with English choral favourites by Purcell and Howells.

Tickets: £15 (concessions for the unwaged £10), available from www.wegottickets.com

Nearest stations: Covent Garden and Leicester Square

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A Pair of Sparkling Eyes

Friday 18 March, 7.30pm, St Paul's Church, Rectory Grove, Clapham, London SW4

Tenor Stephen Cviic, soprano Antonia Cviic and other members of St Paul's Opera present an evening of operatic highlights with a romantic theme, including excerpts from Bizet's Carmen, Mozart’s The Magic Flute, and music by Handel and Puccini, among others. Tickets include a glass of wine.

Tickets: £15 (concessions £12) on the door or in advance from www.wegottickets.com/StPaulsOpera

Nearest stations: Clapham Common tube and Wandworth Road Overground.

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You are reminded that you are invited to the Annual General Meeting and a committee meeting of the British-Croatian Society to be held on Tuesday 8 March at 18.30 at the Croatian Embassy, 21 Conway Street, London W1T 6BN.

The meeting will include a report of the year and plans for the future, an update on the Society's membership and finances, as well as the appointment of trustees and committee members.

We are always looking for new ideas and would very much welcome your presence.

On Saturday 5th of March, the Croatian Supplementary School in London is organising a workshop called Raising a Bilingual Child: Learning Together.

The workshop aims to support parents in bringing up children to be bilingual by sharing solutions to the challenges they encounter and exploring practical strategies for enhancing learning.

The workshop will take place at Croatian Embassy.

The workshop starts at 10am and it will finish around 11.30am.

The event is free, but you must register to attend. Please email [email protected] to book your place.

Leap Summit
5 -7 May 2016, Zagreb

Message from the Croatian Embassy in London

Leap Summit will gather more than 1,000 young people who are entrepreneurs, NGO leaders, students, leaders and opinion leaders in their respective communities. Main themes of the Leap Summit will be connected to innovations, entrepreneurship, modern technologies, career development and success stories. The Summit is under patronage of President of Republic of Croatia and is highly supported by University of Zagreb. The Leap Summit international conference hopes to gather a lot of Croatian participants who live outside of Croatia, to exchange ideas and positive experiences.

You can download pdf here.

MIMIKA is excellent jazz orchestra formed from a younger generation of London based jazz soloists and run by Croatian composer and conductor Mak Murtić and singer Maja Rivić. They will play a gig in one of the best jazz clubs in London, Vortex in Dalston.

For further information, please go to:

www.vortexjazz.co.uk
www.facebook.com/events/456148251245920/

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The Croatian Embassy has passed to us information about the project Vukovar Water Tower - Symbol of Croatian Unity received from representatives of the City of Vukovar. For further information, please contact the City of Vukovar:

Dr. Franje Tudjmana 1
32000 Vukovar
CROATIA
Tel. +385 32 456 524
Fax. +385 32 456 570

You can download pdf here.

Here is the link to hear the recording of the fantastic concert of Croatian pianist Dejan Lazić in the Wigmore Hall on 18th of January in the BBC Radio 3 series 'Wigmore Hall Mondays'.

At the end of concert he played his own composition '3 Istrian Dances Op 15a '.

Croatian countertenor Max Emanuel Cencic

The famous Croatian countertenor Max Emanuel Cencic gave a concert at the Wigmore Hall on 27th of December. Click here to see a review of the concert.

Adrian Chiles BBC programme

You may like to know about this BBC programme that is now available on iPlayer.

My Mediterranean with Adrian Chiles, Episode 1 www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b06vngp4

This is what the BBC says:
Adrian Chiles converted to Catholicism ten years ago, but wonders whether his choice of church was an accident of birth and geography. If he had been born in Istanbul or Jerusalem, would he have been equally happy being a Muslim or a Jew? In this first episode, he visits the stunning Dalmatian coast, where he meets up with his Croatian mum and reveals how he got the nickname Holy Joe.

Next stop is Istanbul, where he has fun in the Grand Bazaar before heading out on the Bosphorus with a Muslim fisherman. During Eid al-Adha, a major Islamic festival, Adrian struggles to watch the celebratory sacrifice. He travels to Jerusalem for the Jewish festival of Sukkot, and then moves on to Tel-Aviv to get drunk with a gay, atheist, Jewish celebrity chef. His final stop is an Evangelical concert by the Dead Sea, attended by Christians from all over the world.

Dejan Lazic has a lunch time piano concert at the Wigmore Hall on January 18. For details, please visit wigmore-hall.org.uk

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You may be interested in this radio interview with Gordana Johnson on the British-Croatian Society's photographic exhibition photographingCroatia.

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Peter Frankopan's 'The Silk Roads' is number 1 in the Daily Telegraph's UK non fiction list. We hope to have a talk by Peter in our 2016 programme. For more information about the book and Peter, please go to www.bloomsbury.com

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We have a full programme planned for 2016. If you are not a member and would like to support us by joining, please go to our website www.britishcroatiansociety.com.

2015 – a bumper year at the British-Croatian Society

A challenge: how many Croatian writers’ books are available to read in English? (we will give you the answer in a moment) London has seen Croatian authors, from established figures such as Daša Drndić to some of the many exciting new writers, at the Croatian stand at the London Book Fair each year. This generates a lot of interest. We spotted an opportunity to help British readers with an interest in Croatia, but no knowledge of Croatian, by publishing Writing Croatia. This lists Croatian fiction translated into English, as well as fiction set in Croatia by non-Croats, and a section of non-fiction books.

The answer to our question is that we have so far found 108 books by Croatian fiction writers that are available in English listed in Writing Croatia (there are probably more – so if you know of some we have missed, please tell us).

Writing Croatia is a follow-up to Mapping Croatia, a guide to Croatian works of art in UK museums and galleries, which we published as part of the Welcome Croatia festival in 2013. There are many more Croatian works in the UK than you might think, most of them in public museums to be seen free of charge. If you would like copies, both are available free of charge by emailing us at our address below.

How can Croatia make an impact in the UK? It is not easy. One way we tried for the first 6 months of 2015 was to build on the Croatian involvement with the London Book Fair, adding to it other events and branding them as

creativeCroatia
bringing contemporary Croatia to London in 2015

Various organizations were involved - the embassy fielded many of them – and we used the logo on our activities. The highlight was the embassy’s inclusion of the bronze sculpture of the young athlete recovered from the Adriatic in 1999 in the British Museum ‘Defining Beauty’ exhibition.

With the embassy we organized creativeCroatia events such as the concert with Diana Brekalo and friends that raised nearly £1,000 for the English section of the library of the school in Gunja destroyed by floods, and the presentation by Vanja Žanko at the ArtEco Gallery that brought us bang up to date with the contemporary art scene in Croatia.

It is always good to hear Dr Ivan Grdesić, the Croatian Ambassador, talk. We put him together with Peter Sanfey, a senior economist at EBRD (the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development) at an ‘in conversation’ event. EBRD has invested 3.1 billion euros in Croatia so bringing them together provoked a good relaxed discussion of current political and economic issues (if you want to know more about EBRD, you can do so at www.ebrd.com/croatia.html).

EBRD has been a good partner of the British-Croatian Society over the years in hosting the Chris Cviić memorial lecture. Chris was an influential figure on Croatian and Balkan issues and at one time worked at EBRD. This year Boris Vujčić, the Governor of the Croatian National Bank, gave a detailed presentation on the economy.

Tena Stivičić, one of Croatia’s foremost literary figures, later in the year appeared at another ‘in conversation’. With Roy Cross (a former British Council Director in Croatia) they talked about her play ‘3 Winters’ that ran to excellent reviews at the National Theatre, as well as ranging more widely over her work as a playwright.

It is always exciting to find someone who has been profoundly influenced by Croatia. Melanie Hodge is such a person. Melanie has taken the Croatian naïve tradition of reverse oil paintings on glass and made it her own. Her British-Croatian Society exhibition ‘Though A Looking Glass’ at Conway Hall was, according to Martha May of Conway Hall, “one of the most popular exhibitions we’ve held”. For more on Melanie and her work, please go to www.mjhodge.co.uk, or follow her on instagram: Melanie hodge; Twitter: @mjhodge: or Facebook: MJHodge Art and Illustration.

Flora Turner’s knowledge and appreciation of the arts is always impressive and she was on good form when she delivered a talk entitled ‘The Painted Coast’. With superb illustrations, she introduced the audience to the works of British painters in 18th, 19t and 20th century who visited Istria and Dalmatia. Earlier in the year she was the key component in the British-Croatian Society supported Victoria & Albert Museum symposium on Mesštrović, marking the 100th anniversary of his V & A exhibition in 1915.

The Society’s annual dinner was held this year at the prestigious East India Club, an extraordinary ‘home from home for gentlemen’ in the heart of London’s clubland. There can hardly be a more old-fashioned English location for a British-Croatian Society event!

Sensationally good photographs in our final event of the year: photographingCroatia brought together at the embassy the best of the photographs taken in Croatia submitted to us by amateurs and professionals. A fun event to bring to a close a good year for the British-Croatian Society.

Adriatica.net looking for help at their stand on the World Travel Market

Adriatica.net will have their stand on the World Travel Market and have asked if we know anyone that speaks Croatian and that lives in London that would be available to work on their stand for the duration of the fair – 2-5 November from 9am to 6pm at London Excel. The person will have to distribute brochures and help with enquiries.

Please, do let me know if you know someone and we will then put them in contact with Adriatica.net.

Ivana Gavric

Fresh from being awarded 'Record of the Year' for her Grieg Piano Works disc by the Grieg Society and the Norwegian Ambassador in the UK last week, pianist Ivana Gavric will be performing Grieg's ever-popular Piano Concerto this Thursday, 8th October, at St James' Piccadilly at 7-30pm.

More information can be found at www.orchestraofthecity.com

Memorial unveiled to one of Plymouth's greatest sons - former Labour leader Michael Foot

On Friday a memorial was unveiled in Plymouth to Michael Foot, a previous Patron of the British-Croatian Society and a keen supporter of Croatia. The Society made a modest contribution to funding for the memorial.

THIRTEEN
in the Gallery of the Embassy of Croatia
28 May - 1 July 2015

Private view
28 May, 6.30-8.30pm
21 Conway Street, London W1T 6BN

In THIRTEEN, a diverse group of amateur and professional photographers work without the constraint of a single theme, each showing one side of their creativity. The images in the exhibition span a selection of photographic genres and techniques - colour or monochrome, traditional darkroom processing or digital manipulation.

For each of these photographers, in addition to the artistic and technical choice of subject and method, taking photographs is a means of individual expression - each image has a unique personal stamp.

Viewers are invited to consider each image on its own as well as in relation to the group, for their visual pleasure.

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May 19, 2015, 1pm
St Martin-in-the-Fields

Free Lunchtime Concert: St Martin's Embassy Series
Diana Brekalo

Croatian Literary Events

Croatia will again have a stand at the London Book Fair in April and Croatian literary events will take place at the Fair and elsewhere. The Tristram Bates Theatre, just off Leicester Square, is an ideal intimate small theatre for the following event based on the English version of Olja

Marko Cindrić is a theatre and TV actor. He is also Artistic Director-Producer of Nu:Write Theatre Festival Zagreb.

Ivica Buljan is an award-winning Croatian theatre director with international experience. He is the theatre and art director of zagrebtheatrefestival.hr.

Nataša Janjić is an award-winning stage actress. Since 2006, she has worked at the Zagreb City Drama Theatre, Gavella.

creativeCroatia
bringing contemporary Croatia to London in 2015

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V&A Ivan Mestrovic Symposium

To mark the centenary of the hugely important exhibition of Ivan Mestrovic in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London in 1915, the Victoria and Albert Museum is holding a symposium devoted to Ivan Mestrovic on Wednesday 24 June. It is organised in cooperation with the Mestrovic Museums in Croatia and three of their curators will give a paper. The speakers will include curators from the V&A, and specialists for sculpture and architecture from the UK and abroad.

It will be a fairly intimate event, with a roundtable format, and we hope interesting ideas will be exchanged. It is free of charge, but places are very limited, and an early registration is essential. To register please contact creativeCroatia at [email protected].

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International Trust for Croatian Monuments

Tuesday 9 June, 7.30pm
Holy Trinity Church
Sloane Square
London SW1

Read the full details here.

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New York Times review of Tena Štivičić's 'Three Winters'

Read the full review here.

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A Night at the Opera

AMAC-UK 2015 concert 'A Night at the Opera' to be held on February 28.
This will raise funds to support awards for Croatian young scientists.

You can view more information here.

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Croatian Embassy Fund Raising Concert

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Vlado Kristl at Tate Modern in November

An influential figure in Croatian avant-garde, Vlado Kristl’s work from his ground breaking animations produced at the Zagreb Film animation studio to his first live action film General I resni Clovek / The General, that was banned in 1962, will be shown alongside works by his contemporaries from the active Cine-Club movement in Croatia including Ante Verzotti, Milan Šamec, Mihovil Pansini, Tomislav Gotovac, Vladimir Petek and Ivan Martinac.

Kristl began filmmaking after his involvement in the abstract art movement EXAT 51, starting at the famous Zagreb Film studio he produced early films such as Krada dragulja / Great Jewel Robbery 1959 and his iconoclastic Cervantes adaptation Don Kihot 1961, a remarkable animation that radically reduced the source material recasting the Don Quixote and Sancho Panza against an abstract barren landscapes and fighting a rampant military.

His first live-action film General I resni Clovek / The General, an absurd drama set in a prison camp see Kristl as the lead inspiring an insurrection. The general of the title, whose appearance is heralded with laugher, bares an uncanny resemblance to President Tito that lead to the instant banning and destruction of the film – but not before a copy was smuggled out of Yugoslavia quickly followed by Kristl’s own departure.

Illustrated talks will explore the legacy of Vlado Kristl, EXAT 51 and the Croatia Cine-Clubs with film historian and persident of the Croatian Film Club Association Hrvoje Turkovic followed by a discussion with curator and researcher Branka Benčić.

3 Winters

Tena Štivičić's play 3 Winters is at the National Theatre from November 26

From the remnants of monarchy to Communism, democracy, war and the EU: Croatia 1945-2011. The Kos family argue, adapt, fall in and out of love.

World after world is erected and torn down around them. The one constant is the ivy-clad house in Zagreb, built by aristocrats, partitioned, owned by all, owned by a few; witness to four increasingly educated and independent generations of women.

But when the family assemble for Lucia's wedding, Alisa learns that her nouveau-riche brother-in-law has bought the once nationalised house. For the bride this is progress, for her sister it's a shady act of greed. For their principled parents, finally, it's one battle too many.

Against a country in turmoil, Tena Štivičić's 3 Winters creates the portrait of an eclectic family, held together by the courage to survive.

Hrvatska dopunska škola

The Croatian Supplementary School has been taking part in a research project with Goldsmiths, University of London, entitled ‘Critical Connections: Multilingual Digital Storytelling Project’, involving 5 supplementary schools, 5 mainstream schools and 3 overseas schools. This two year project (2012-2014), funded by the Paul Hamlyn Foundation, involves pupils in creating and evaluating digital stories, developing skills in language and literacy as well as more critical and sophisticated use of multimedia tools. It is innovative and exciting work which supports schools in engaging learners and in developing a curriculum which is attuned to the needs of culturally diverse societies and a more interconnected and interdependent world.The Film Festival at Goldsmiths to celebrates and discusses pupils’ work. The school students have created digital stories in a range of languages (Arabic, Chinese, Croatian, English, English as a second language, French, German and Greek).

Floods in Serbia, Bosnia Herzegovina and Croatia: appeals for help

Croatian Church

The Croatian Chaplaincy is organizing a collection of financial assistance for those affected by the devastating floods. During this week you can send donations to the Chaplaincy’s account:
The Croatian Church, Sort Code 50-21-01, Account Number 57228701.
Please advise them of your donation by e-mail [email protected] so that they can forward them next week to the Caritas of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Should you wish to send your donations directly you can do that to the following accounts: Caritas in Croatia, account IBAN HR05 2340 0091 1000 8034 0, reference number 175
Caritas in Bosnia and Herzegovina account IBAN BA39 338 690 481 206 3318, SWIFT CODE: UNCRBA 22.
They will also be collecting donations during the Sunday Mass on the 25th May 2014 at 4 pm in the Sacred Heart Church, 110 Horseferry Road, London SW1P 2EF for the flood affected communities in Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Serbia.

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Red Cross

Thousands of people are left homeless, without food, water, and warm and dry clothes due to severe flooding in Croatia, Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina. They need your help! Donate to the Red Cross organisations which are leading the humanitarian efforts in the region:
Croatian Red Cross:
IBAN: HR 6923400091511555516
SWIFT: PBZGHR2X
FULL BENEFICIARY NAME : HRVATSKI CRVENI KRIŽ,
FULL BENEFICIARY ADDRESS: ULICA CRVENOG KRIŽA 14, P.P. 93, 10001 ZAGREB
You can also make an online payment via credit card for “Pomoć za poplavljena područja u Hrvatskoj/Srbiji/Bosni i Hercegovini“ here. Red Cross Serbia:
Instructions for payments in EUR, GBP, USD are here (select English in upper right corner).
Red Cross Bosnia and Herzegovina:
IBAN CODE: BA391610000000850119
SWIFT CODE : RZBABA2S
FULL BENEFICIARY NAME : CRVENI KRIZ FEDERACIJE BIH SARAJEVO
FULL BENEFICIARY ADDRESS: NEDIMA FILIPOVICA 9, SARAJEVO
More information and news are here (google translator is available in right sidebar under ‘Izaberite jezik’).

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The Seagull

The ZKM theatre company from Zagreb will be performing Chekhov's The Seagull in Croatian with English surtitles on Saturday, May 24 at the Nottingham Playhouse. For details and how you can buy tickets (£13 or £11 concessions), please go to Notingham Playhouse

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Invitation

Vera Stevens, the winner of the Welcome Croatia Festival photographic competition "Croatia through the lens", will now have her own exhibition at the Croatian Embassy and you are invited. If you wish to attend the opening at 18:00 on April 17, please email [email protected] by April 14.

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OURFC V Croatia

Croatia Poster

Lea And Daria | UK Jewish Film Festival

If you missed the film "Lea and Daria" at the Croatian Film Festival, you will be able to see it at the Jewish Film Festival, from 3rd to 9th February at "JW3", 341-351 Finchley Road, London NW3 6ET.

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Croatian Language School for Children

The Croatian language school for children aged 5 to 14 will re-open in January 2014. The school is situated at the Croatian Embassy in London, 21 Conway Street, W1T 6BN. The lesson are held there on Saturdays and groups and timings will be confirmed at a later date, and will depend on the number of children enrolled. For more information please visit
www.cro-school.org.uk, or contact Ivana Capps on 07949 772314 or email [email protected]

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Dubrovnik Foreign Circle Appeal

Over £3,000 has been raised by the British-Croatian Society in response to our appeal for donations to support the Dubrovnik Foreign Circle's proposal to provide the Dubrovnik Hospital children's unit with a spirometer.

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A Visit to Fort George, Vis September 2013

This September my husband and I went first to Vis where we had been invited for the ceremony of the reopening of Fort George. William Wenkel, the young London-based businessman and Swedish naval reserve officer, who has invested heavily in the restoration of the fort and has a 25 year concession to run it as a cultural and recreational centre, asked Malcolm to advise on the contents and layout of a museum. Housed in the fort itself the museum is to cover the three main periods of the military history of Vis; the occupation and fortification by the British at the beginning of the nineteenth century; its use as an Austrian naval base; and by the allies and partisans in the Second World War. Besides the museum the fort will have a gallery for various local or international artists in residence to exhibit their work. There will also be concerts, facilities for meetings, conferences and receptions, with a restaurant, wine cellar and terrace bar and discotheque.

Almost five years had passed since our last visit to the fort, then in a sad state of neglect and disrepair and overgrown. So, when soon after our arrival on Vis, William and his team took us to the fort to show what progress had been made, we were more than pleasantly surprised. Under the guidance of the Split conservationist Sanja Buble, and in spite of the many bureaucratic hurdles to be surmounted, the inevitable delays and complications with the excavations and reconstruction, and escalating costs, much has been achieved. But the work is far from finished and more costly work remains to be undertaken. What has been done so far is a very considerable achievement, realising the fort's potential as one of the most splendid venues for entertainment and cultural activity in this part of the Adriatic. The mayor of Vis, Ivo Radica, has been supportive from the start when he interested William in the fort as a place to host parties for the yacht weeks, the primary business of William and his partners, the profits of which are being invested in the restoration. The Vis municipality has made an essential contribution by asphalting the road to the fort and laying a pipeline to supply water.

On the evening of September 6, 200 years since the British built the original fort in 1812-13, with fanfares and the beating of drums by a Croatian naval band, Admiral John McAnally, president of the Royal Navy Association, formally ordered the gate of the fort to be opened. Instead of a salute by cannon, there followed the explosion of fireworks on the roof of the fort.

The carefully choreographed and symbolic opening ceremony was witnessed by an international gathering of guests, including the mayor and local dignitaries, Croatian Navy officers representing the President of the Republic, Ivo Josipovic. and the British Ambassador to Croatia and British military attaches. Mingling with these official quests were retired Swedish naval officers and numerous other Swedish friends and family members of William Wenkel and his business partners, British with homes on Vis, and a number of representatives of Austria in nineteenth century uniforms, including one magnificent individual in an admiral's uniform with sideburns to match (reminding one of Gilbert and Sullivan). When the guests were assembled on the roof terrace, Admiral McAnally delivered a speech, after which the Union flag was lowered and replaced by the flag of Croatia by Croatian Navy officers. The Admiral then presented the key of the fort to the Commodore Robert Hranj, commanding the Croatian Navy, who then gave a speech and handed it on to the Mayor of Vis, Ivo Radica, who in turn entrusted it to William Wenkel.

After that the sit down dinner was hosted on the top terrace with all night partying for younger members until early hours of the morning.

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Sir Arthur Evans in Dalmatia

The Welcome Croatia Sir Arthur Evans seminar at the Ashmolean in Oxford last week was a great success. For those who were unable to attend, you might like to see the text of the introductory session from the Director of the museum, Dr Christopher Brown. It is attached to this email.

Sir Arthur Evans is today mostly remembered for his archaeological work on the island of Crete, and especially his excavations at the so-called ‘Palace of Minos’ at Knossos. But before Knossos, there were many other regions and time periods that attracted his interest.

Influenced by his father’s diverse antiquarian interests – the famous prehistorian Sir John Evans – young Arthur travelled extensively across Europe, while still an Oxford History undergraduate. His first visit to Croatia was in the late summer 1871 with his brother Lewis as part of a larger trip that included Austria.

Evans returned to Croatia in 1875, again joined by his brother Lewis. That was the beginning of a journey through Bosnia and Herzegovina which he later published as a book to gain an enthusiastic response by the press and critics of the time. The book was widely read and even quoted in Parliament – Evans became an authority in the region ‘after a month’s travel and a single book’.

While in Croatia, Evans visited Zagreb, Sisak, and Ragusa (modern Dubrovnik). He was interested in everyday life as his writings and drawings suggest. For the archaeology of the region, especially in Dalmatia, and Evans’s efforts to bring it to light and make it accessible to the wider world, you will hear more later this afternoon by our distinguished speakers, Professor John Wilkes, Dr Susan Sherratt, Dr Susan Walker and Dr Helena Tomas.

The most celebrated period of Evans in Croatia was by far the years between 1878 and 1882, when he worked as correspondent for the Manchester Guardian. In 1878 he married Margaret Freeman and together they made Ragusa their home, where Arthur had taken a 20-year lease on a beautiful house overlooking the sea, called Casa San Lazzaro.

Evans came to dislike Austrian rule as much as the Ottoman. He would write: ‘The people were treated not as a liberated, but as a conquered and inferior race; their sense of right – which they do possess in a remarkable degree – is simply trodden underfoot.’ His anti-Austrian reports and activities led to his imprisonment and eventual expulsion from the area.

In 1932, at the age of 81 and after an absence of fifty years, Evans revisited Croatia with his sister-in-law Helen Freeman. He flew to Zagreb from where he wrote: ‘the traveller arriving by air, looks down on what is now a city of over a quarter of a million inhabitants, spaciously ‘town-planned’, with a bright garden band stretching to its centre, and interspersed with fine public buildings…’. Evans’s journey ended with a visit to Ragusa where he was welcomed as a hero. There he saw his old house, garden, and the prison where he was incarcerated in 1882. Such was Evans’s love for Ragusa that his half-sister and biographer, Dame Joan Evans would write that ‘for many years he had felt that he would best find rest in the flowery graveyard, barred by the shadows of Cypresses, that lies outside the walls of the city’. Although his attention progressively shifted to Crete, Evans never abandoned his interest in Dalmatia and the region as a whole.

The influence of Sir Arthur Evans extends far and beyond the realm of Minos and the island of Crete and even that of archaeology. His liberal views on the political situation in southeastern Europe and his knowledge on the people, the land and the different cultures made him an expert of the complex history of that part of the world.

The Ashmolean’s half-day symposium on ‘Sir Arthur Evans in Dalmatia’ presents us with a great opportunity to explore his travels in the region and to look at contemporary Croatian archaeology in celebration of Croatia’s accession to the European Union on the 1st of July.

It gives me particular pleasure to welcome the Croatian Ambassador Dr Ivan Grdešić (and Mrs Grdešić) to the Ashmolean on this special occasion. Finally, I should like to thank Dr Yannis Galanakis and ‘Welcome Croatia’ for organising today’s symposium, and Archaeopress for their financial support of the event.

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Shearsman Books to publish Tin Ujević's poems translated by Richard Berengarten

Shearsman Books are about to publish bilingual edition of small selection of Tin Ujević's poems translated by Richard Berengarten and Daša Marić. Tin's poems have hardly been translated into English, and this is the first real attempt to do so seriously, even though on a small scale. Richard's translations have been published on several Croatian websites, most significantly in the cultural and academic web-journal "[sic]", a venture of the University of Zadar. There is also an extended critical and interpretative essay on Tin on the same website, which is quite possibly the first serious attempts by a British literary scholar to approach his work.

These translations have been widely circulated informally and on the web. For example, an enterprising English teacher in Croatia has been using some of these poems to help her pupils learn English. As the charming performances by these children suggest, Richard's translations retain the melos of Tin's poems.

YouTube clip 1

YouTube clip 2

YouTube clip 3

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Evening Standard review of West End hit musical 'Once', Wednesday 10 April 2013

Read about Croatian actress Zrinka Cvitesic at the heart of the new West End hit musical 'Once' Evening Standard

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Croatian Stand at the London Book Fair 2013

Read about Croatian Stand at the London Book Fair Croatian Stand

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Mapping Croatia

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An initiative to be supported

I would like to inform the members of the British Croatian society about an important project worthy of our interest and support. It regards the future development and the preservation of the beautiful and unique island of Vis It is particularly interesting for the British Croatian Society because the island’s place in two crucial periods in the British history. It served for a short time as a British base in the Napoleonic wars, from which time there are still the remains of several British fortifications, in need of restoration. Furthermore the island served as a secure base for the Allied air forces during the last years of WW2. Until a year ago, while they were still capable of undertaking it, British veterans from that war (some of whose lives were saved once they reached Vis) made an annual visit to the island to commemorate this episode and honour their comrades. However, Vis has a much older history, in relation to which a local volunteer cultural association ‘Lavurat za poja’ (‘To labour for the fields’) successfully organised an international symposium called “ Anatomy of an Island”, supported by the municipalities Vis and Komiza, at the end of September 2012.

The purpose of the symposium was to revaluate the local historic and environmental legacy and develop ideas and proposals for the intelligent preservation and use of existing historical attractions, to create and give a valuable cultural content to the island’s tourist industry, and to prevent undesirable and uncontrolled overdevelopment. For the introductory symposium the organisers gathered an impressive group of specialist lecturers in the fields of archaeology, architecture, economics and history who analysed different aspects of the island from their particular points of view. The symposium, apart from local inhabitants, was attended by 200 participants amongst them 32 students of architecture from Japan, Croatia and Slovenia. The lecturers worked for the second part of symposium with the students divided into 6 groups to develop ideas arising from the lectures during the first week.

Among the specialists was one of the most famous Japanese architects, Prof. Kengo Kuma, who has two architectural studios in France and a chair at Tokyo University. He talked about his work in small and delicate environments. He was followed by Prof. Radovic, also teaching architecture in Japan, who talked about world trends in sustaining small environments. Apart from them one of the best known architects and selector for Venice Biennale 2010 Arch. Kazuyo Selima joined the symposium during its seminar week where she worked with the students.

Archeologists Boris Chargo, Lorenzzo Guzzardi from Siracusa in Sicily, Mirosalv Katic, Dinko Radic and other well-known archaeologists saw possibilities in enhancing the idea of the antique Greek colony of Issa, the oldest urban development in Dalmatia dating from 2400 BC. Ancient Issa, the outlines of which are still visible, was created when Greeks from Syracuse in Sicily decided to establish colonies along the Adriatic sea routes to facilitate trade with the Northern Adriatic . The Greek colonisation began with the development of the town and port of ancient Issa, which subsequently served as a starting point for further settlements such as Trogir and Stobrec. Issa was founded approximately at the same time as the Aegean Greeks founded Pharos. The archaeologists talked about antique Issa’s significance, explaining its layout and purpose, and how to read what is left of it. In the open debate that followed, all the participants in the symposium were invited to discuss how the site could be better preserved and made more interesting as a tourist attraction. Today the site of ancient Issa, near the central part of the town and port of Vis, is still not completely excavated, and what has been is rather neglected , certainly not well enough presented to attract much attention, except from dedicated archaeologists.

However the Greek site and its preservation was only one of the themes of the symposium. Other lecturers offered various insights on the island’s history, economy and architecture. The British historian, Malcolm Scott Hardy, author of the book “The British and Vis”, talked about some recent research placing the island in the context of political and military developments involving the British, Austrians and Russians exactly two hundred years before in 1812..

Considering that many of the islands along the Adriatic Croatian coast have been neglected (for example there are no boat connections between Komiza and the mainland), the Vis project should be of importance for the Croatian economy, because it stresses the need for control of future developments and their integration within the ecological, environmental and cultural preservation of the Dalmatian islands.

Realising the importance of the project, the ministries of culture and tourism have given support, making it possible to extend it for the next four years and for it to serve as a model to be followed by other islands.

A resident of Vis, the architect Bosko Budisavljevic, who was in charge of this exceptionally well-organised symposium and seminar, deserves much praise for this project, together with his many voluntary collaborators. The active participation of the present mayor of Vis, who hosted several excellent evenings and attended the various presentation, was particularly welcome.

More about this symposium with details of all the participants can be found on the web page:

Anatomija Otoka

Vesna Domany Hardy

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statement-of-intent

Dear Sir/Madam,

I am a Croatian laywer living in the UK. As I have recently witnessed many questions from Croatians living in th UK regarding their/our legal immigration status, once Croatia joins the EU (especially during the recent speech Mrs Pusic gave at the EBRD), I hereby wish to share with all my fellow Croatians a new document published last week at the UK Border Agency website.

The UK government has introduced to the Parliament the European Union (Croatian Accession) Bill on 18 October 2012. Accordingly, the Home Office has published a Statement of Intent setting out the transitional restrictions which it expects to apply to Croatian nationals working in the UK after 1 July 2013.

Please find attached the Statement of Intent. This document is not definitive, but it gives a useful indication of what to expect in terms of rights and obligations.

Many thanks.

Kind regards,

Lana Rukavina

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Chris Cviic Memorial Lecture

Vesna Pusić, Croatia's Foreign and European Affairs Minister, gave the annual Chris Cviić memorial lecture on 17 October organised by the British-Croatian Society with the European Bank of Reconstruction and Development. Her subject was Croatia in the EU.

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Letter from the President

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BLOOM Igra

Projekt je odlicno prihvacen od javnosti! Ljudi ga jako vole, pogotovo djeca i vec je jako popularan. I bez ikakvih uputa javnost intuitivno pristupa projektu i iako je BLOOM komponenta jednostavna i samo jednog tipa, svi s lakocom uspjevaju sloziti vrlo unikatne strukture. Ljudi vrlo brzo postaju ovisni o BLOOM igri - slicno originalnim LEGO blokovima koji su jako univerzalni i generalni - ali bas zato pruzaju mogucnost neiscrpnog broja kombinacija i "igraliste" su za vasu mastu! Imaginacije je jedino ogranicenje... S obzirom na velicinu komponenti (40 cm) Bloom strukture brzo rastu!

Dva velika paviljona koja smo mi u pocetku konstruirali (oba u labirint konfiguracijama kroz koje ljudi a pogotovo djeca mogu prolaziti) su vrlo brzo dozivjeli potpune transformacije od strane posjetitelja. Na neki nacin su nase pocetne strukture ohrabrile posjetitelje da se sami vrlo revno angaziraju. BLOOM je dizajniran na nacin suprotan minimalnim optimalnim strukturama koje se moraju sastavljati po strogim pravilima. jako puno poveznih tocki u strukturi (redundancija) omogucava visoku toleranciju strukture i puno mogucnosti za improvizaciju koja je sastavni dio BLOOM igre. Strukture genrativno rastu kroz interaktivnu igru...

Ja ovakav tip konstrukcija obicno koristim u svojoj metodologiji sa studentima na universitetu kad tek pocnu raditi na logickim strukturama (algorithmima) koje su moja specijalnost. Na taj nacin studenti dobiju vrlo intuitivan osjecaj za kod i matematicke strukture koje se naknadno razviju u generativne kompjuterske metode za dizajn. Trafalgar Square ce biti najznacajnija lokacija i ona ce se otvoriti 28.8.

DAZ blog

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Croatian Cyclists in London for Olympics

A 17 member team of Croatian cyclists arrived in London for the Olympics after a 32 day cycle from Zagreb. They were welcomed by Lord Bates and taken to see the Houses of Parliament before cycling off to Stratford to complete their journey.

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Welcome Croatia

Preparations are under way for a major Croatian festival, Welcome Croatia, to take place in the UK from January to June, 2013. The programme is expected to include:The launch of a photography competition Croatia through the eyes of a visitorin February 2012. This will run over 12 months leading to an exhibition of theshort-listed prize winners in February 2013.

• Croatia, Sporting Powerhouse will be shown just before the Olympics with a top sports personality to open it and then tour around the UK during the festival
• a map listing all the Croatian cultural objects in the UK and how to find them
• working with major museums there will be a programme to display significant Croatian pieces in museum collections during the festival with accompanying talks
• a Croatian film festival
• an academic seminar on the early history of Croatia
• publishing a Croatian cookery book with associated food and wine events
• a project with school children in the two countries working together to explore their differences and similarities
• music events from classical to contemporary
• a Croatian literary programme

The festival committee, chaired by Sir John Ramsden, consists of the British-Croatian Society, the Croatian Students and Young Professionals Network, the Embassy of the Republic of Croatia, the Oxford Association of Croatian Graduates, the International Trust for Croatian Monuments, the Croatian National Tourist Office and the British Croatian Chamber of Commerce.

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Our Chair, Flora Turner, represented the British-Croatian Society at an event on February 1 to honour Dr Kathy Wilkes. Vivian Grisogono has sent this report. You can also watch the event by going to the link given at the bottom of this page.

Dr Kathy Wilkes honoured in Dubrovnik

Dr Kathleen Vaughan Wilkes (1946-2003) was an Oxford philosopher, lecturer at St. Hilda's, who achieved a special kind of eminence. Her formidable intellect was matched with indomitable courage whenever she was faced with physical danger and adversity. Details of her adventurous life and academic career were celebrated in the St. Hilda's Chronicle following her death.

Having become a Fellow of St. Hilda's in 1972 at the age of 26, she volunteered six years later to visit Prague, then behind the Iron Curtain, to give philosophy seminars, which were considered a dissident activity. She returned to then-Czechoslovakia several times, even after she had been refused a visa, and was tireless in helping Czech academics and students right up to the fall of the Iron Curtain in the 'Velvet Revolution' of 1989.

Kathy also spent time teaching in the then-Soviet Union, Poland, Bulgaria, Brazil and China, but it was in former Yugoslavia that her courage and resources were put to the greatest test. She had become Chairman of the Executive Committee of Dubrovnik's Inter-University Centre in 1986, and spent time teaching there every year, as well as co-editing with William Newton-Smith an academic journal first entitled 'Dubrovnik Papers' and later `International Studies in the Philosophy of Science'. Kathy was in Dubrovnik in 1991 when the Serb-led Yugoslav National Army suddenly attacked the city with ruthless, sickening aggression.

For the 1996 -1997 edition of the St. Hilda's chronicle, Kathy wrote a moving article about what life in Dubrovnik was like under siege from September 1991 to January 1992. Her personal account evoked the full horror of the relentless attacks from air, sea and land against one of the most beautiful historical holiday resorts in the world. No journalist's report ever matched her descriptions in bringing home the full extent of the tragedy. On October 3rd 1991, Kathy spoke with calm determination to the BBC World Service for their Topical Reports: 'There's no water. There's no electricity. This is the only phone in Dubrovnik. There's fire all around. I think nobody including the Croatian President knows the extent of the damage here. The houses are on fire. About a quarter of Dubrovnik and the suburbs have been destroyed.' That was two months before the specially brutal aggression on December 6th 1991, the feast of St. Nicholas which marks the start of Catholic Christmas celebrations.

Kathy stayed in the city, helping the local people in every way possible, and sharing the misery and deprivations of the experience. She left only to collect aid to bring back to the city, travelling under very difficult circumstances. Besides being brilliant academically, she was very practical: she brought back medical supplies and even an ambulance while the siege was still on, and later on mine detectors when the area around Dubrovnik could be cleared. She seemed specially attuned to practical needs: in her article for the St. Hilda's Chronicle, written after the end of the aggression, she highlighted the disaster of Vukovar, a city which was suffering much worse than Dubrovnik, but without the international sympathy focused on the latter. She also pointed out that refugees were still crammed into Dubrovnik's surviving hotels, and the outlying villages were totally devastated.

Kathy received several honours for her courage, tenacity, vision and help, including one of Croatia's highest awards (Red Danice hrvatske), but the one she prized most was the honorary citizenship of Dubrovnik, which was granted in 1993. After her death, Kathy's ashes were scattered in the sea under the Lovrijenac fortress. In 2011 the city officials decided to mark their continuing appreciation of her unique contribution with a commemorative plaque on an historic square near the fortress, renaming the square after her. The formal unveiling ceremony was held on February 1st 2012 during the celebrations for the feast of Saint Blaise, Dubrovnik's patron saint. It was attended by a select group of people, including children too young to have known the war, alongside some of Kathy's old friends such as Mr Pero Poljanic, Dubrovnik's Mayor at the time of the siege; Mrs Berta Dragicevic, long-serving secretary of the Inter-University Centre; and Mrs Tea Batinic, owner of the Artur art gallery, in whose house Kathy stayed during the war. Four prominent people spoke movingly of her achievements from different standpoints: the present Mayor of Dubrovnik Mr Andro Vlahusic, the Town Council President Mrs Olga Muratti, Inter-University Centre Director Prof.dr.Krunoslav Pisk, and Mrs Flora Turner, Kathy's successor as Chairman of the British-Croatian Society.

Vivian Grisogono

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MNMH_NOcroM&feature=related

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One of our members has sent the following information about the recent Klapa Motovun concert in London:

The Klapa Motovun concert at St Martin in-the-Fields, Trafalgar Square, January 17, 2012 was a resounding success, ending with a standing ovation. For those of you who couldn't attend, here are three clips. For those of you who did, a reminder of the wonderful music. Enjoy and feel free to pass on the links.

The 2011 annual dinner of the British-Croatian Society featuring the City of Dubrovnik was held in the prestigious surroundings of the Oxford and Cambridge Club on Pall Mall, London on Saturday December 3. The dinner, attended by over 100 people including the Deputy Mayor of Dubrovnik Mr Niko Salja and his wife, was supported by the City of Dubrovnik. Dr Robin Harris, author of Dubrovnik: A History, gave a talk entitled The Historic Achievement of Dubrovnik (now printed in the second of the new series of booklets issued by the Society). A raffle at the dinner raised 640 GBP for this year's British-Croatian Society charity Napredak from Dubrovnik (www.hkdnapredak.com). The following is a translation from an article that appeared in the Dubrovacki Vjesnik newspaper on December 12, 2011:

The twentieth anniversary of the ruthless destruction of Dubrovnik is still remembered in London. The British-Croatian Society, supported by the City of Dubrovnik Tourist Board and many members and donors, held their traditional annual dinner this year dedicated to the memory of the victims of the war.The evening was organised in the classical ambience of the Oxford and Cambridge Club, preceded by an exhibition of documents from the history of Dubrovnik in the exhibition hall of our embassy. This was a logical prelude to dinner, where the main speaker was historian Robin Harris, the well-known author of books about Dubrovnik's past and present. At the main table were Deputy Mayor of Dubrovnik Niko Salja, who came with his wife, and hosts Branko Sorkocevic Sorge and the President of the British-Croatian Society, Mrs Flora Turner. Miso Mihocevic was a special guest of honour.The hall, which was filled to capacity, included Ivica Tomic, Ambassador of the Republic of Croatia in the UK, with his guests, Mr Andrew Kojakovic and his daughters, Lady Jadranka Beresford-Peirse and her family, the Frankopan family and many prominent Croats and their British friends.Also at the dinner was the Maestro Oliver Gilmour, recently a resident of Dubrovnik. This provided the opportunity for the Deputy Mayor to announce a new addition to the overall cultural offer of the City - a project entitled the Dubrovnik Summer Opera which will begin in June with the staging of Mozart's opera Cosi fan tutte on Lokrum.A pleasant dinner at the elegant club finished with a raffle to raise funds for a charity supported by the British-Croatian Society.

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AMAC invites you to a talk about Ivan Rabuzin

Even though it is, once again, not possible to organise our annual meeting in person, we will have a virtual version of the event on Sunday, 9th of May at 11:00 am.

We are delighted to announce that Dr Svjetlana Sumpor will give a talk on the life and work of Ivan Rabuzin, and the opening of the Croatian Museum of Naïve Art.

The lecture will be followed by our annual meeting.

Please join us by following the link:
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/87679360959?pwd=QjRmVGZiZWp6NkN3MVkxU244MkpJQT09

Meeting ID: 876 7936 0959
Passcode: 145237

We hope you'll be able to attend and we very much looking forward to seeing you.

Yours, on behalf of the AMAC-UK, Neva Kandžija

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Petrinja Teacher Training College appeal

Lady Jadranka writes: Zana Matulic Bilac, a senior conservator/restorer from Split, sends us this SOS message. 

You can donate direct, following the instructions below, or you can send a donation to International Trust for Croatian Monuments, 34 Cadogan Square, London SW1X 0JL, when, if you are a tax-paying British citizen, the Trust will receive another 25% from British Government.

The evacuation of the library of the Petrinja Teacher Training College

In the catastrophic earthquake that hit the city of Petrinja and its surroundings on December 28 and 29 in 2020, the building of the Faculty of Teacher Education of the University of Zagreb, the location department in Petrinja, was among the severely damaged objects. The library of the Petrinja Teacher Training College was founded in the 1870s and annexed to the Faculty of Teacher Education in 2007. Today, the library has a fund of approximately 28,000 volumes, including 400 protected cultural property items. The archival material created at the Department includes personal files, student files, secretary and accounting files and other material. Due to the necessary reconstruction of the building, it is urgent to evacuate and store the library collection and archival material. Evacuation requires material for cleaning, packing, transport and storage.

Activities related to procuration and evacuation are voluntarily coordinated and organized by the IIC – Croatian Group. The association is one of the eight regional groups of the International Institute for Conservation (IIC) based in London. It has been operating in Croatia since 2009 as an association that brings together experts dealing with the protection of cultural heritage.

Following the unfortunate earthquakes beginning with the one hitting Zagreb in March 2000, the association is continuously focused on professional help and support for colleagues in Zagreb and damaged cultural heritage. Last year, a volunteer project was started at the Volunteers' Centre Zagreb with the aim of better organization and inclusion of experts and students who are not members of the association. After the earthquake that affected the Banovina area, the association expressed its readiness for professional volunteer assistance to the Conservation Department in Sisak. The new project was launched on February 10, 2021, the first major activity being the evacuation of the library in Petrinja led by the member Dragica Krstić, head of the Department for Preservation and Storage of the National and University Library in Zagreb.

As part of the initiative of the IIC – Croatian Group and the IIC headquarters, a fundraiser was started within the international professional community to gather funds for the necessary material. Payments will be made directly to the library through a temporary account opened for that purpose. Since the IIC – Croatian Group is a non-profit association, focused on professional activities, in this way the assistance of the association excludes the financial intermediation in the service of the best implementation.

Preparatory work is already finished and the cost estimates are prepared in collaboration with the senior librarian Andreja Tominac.

Payment details:

Recipient:
Faculty of Teacher Education
University of Zagreb
Savska cesta 77
10 000 Zagreb
Croatia

IBAN: HR9124020061500080595
Model: HR00
Call number: 010321
Purpose of payment: Pomoć - knjižnica UFZG

Payments are to be made before March 1, 2021.

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Earthquakes Benefit Concert - New date

NERHT - New Europe Railway Heritage Trust

In summer 2020 BCS members Robert and Suzanna Dolata were shown round a hugely ambitious Croatian Railway Preservation Society enthusiasts’ project to reopen a railway line through the scenic Raša Valley in Istria closed in 2002.

A British based railway heritage organisation is advising the promoter Neil Vlacic, a Scotsman living in Labin. The project is currently in the process of being registered in Croatia as a voluntary society.

One of NERHT's supporters James Waite has written a book on narrow gauge railways in former Yugoslavia, see flyer. If you know anyone who might be interested in this work, perhaps you'll let them know about it.

The Istria project concerns the heavy standard gauge railway between the coast at Rabac and Buzet. It served the coal mine at Labin, but closed along with the mine in 2002. Track is in good condition – mostly, and buildings are generally intact. Regional and local government authorities favour the idea because of potential to revive engineering industries and generate inland tourism – think of great interest and economic benefits of preserved railways in England.

We will report developments. If you are a railway enthusiast, have a look at NEHRT web page and the attached leaflet about bygone Narrow Gauge Lines.

Robert Dolata

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Weʼre raising £10,000 to Help with Urgent Renovation work to the Croatian Catholic Mission in London.

I have raised 61% online and a further 10% offline.  It would be fabulous to get to the full amount with the support of the broad range of the Croatian community involved as well?

JustGiving link

Nicholas Frankopan

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Kazalište Planet Art

Tomislav Vlahutin has brought to our attention the online theatre production project of Kazalište Planet Art from Zagreb that may be of interest to our Croatian speakers.

'Obraćam Vam se vezano uz novi projekt Kazališta Planet Art – Online kazalište uživo kojim se uživo, online streamingom prenose kazališne predstave na hrvatskom jeziku što je, vjerujem, zanimljivo hrvatskim iseljenicima i hrvatskim manjinskim zajednicama diljem svijeta. 

Projekt je nastao kao odgovor na korona krizu, no ujedno je otvorio mogućnost da na ovaj način predstave mogu gledati po cijelom svijetu svi oni koji nemaju mogućnost fizički prisustvovati kazališnim predstavama na hrvatskom jeziku, a željeli bi to.

Predstave se online prenose s 4 kamere, prilagođene su TV i online mediju čime postaju, kako ih gledatelji opisuju 'kombinacijom kazališta i filma', a za cijenu ulaznice od 39 kuna (cca. 6 USD $) predstave može gledati cijela obitelj.

U ponudi su tri hit komedije Kazališta Planet Art: Velika Zvjerka, Tko je ovdje lud? i Ritina škola koje se tim redoslijedom izmjenjuju nedjeljom u 20h po hrvatskom vremenu.

Riječ je o predstavama koje su među najizvođenijima u Hrvatskoj u posljednjih desetak godina.

Inače, Kazalište Planet Art jedno je od najuspješnijih i najnagrađivanijih kazališta u Hrvatskoj u posljednjih petnaest godina, prepoznato po svojoj kvaliteti, a u njemu igraju prva imena hrvatskog glumišta.

U attachu Vam šaljem opširniji tekst o projektu s vizualima iz predstava, a još opširnije sve informacije možete naći na ovoj web stranici .

Puno hvala!'

Marko Torjanac
Kazalište Planet Art
Vlaška 70a
gsm: + 385 91 1007 967
e-mail: [email protected]

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‘Adopt a Clock’ project

The British-Croatian Society has supported the ‘adopt a clock’ project to help the Museum of Arts and Crafts (Muzej za umjetnosti i obrt) in Zagreb. The project helps to restore some of the damage to the exhibits by the earthquake. One of the damaged clocks has an early 18th century movement by Richard Colley, an ‘eminent maker’ from one of the great periods of London clockmaking, in a slightly later German rococo case.  The Society has limited funds but we responded by ‘adopting’ this clock with a British connection by contributing towards the cost of the restoration of the Colley movement. The restored clock features in an exhibition at the Museum and the support from the British-Croatian Society is acknowledged.

As this year the Society has been unable to hold its annual dinner at which each year money is raised for a deserving project in Croatia, the Society is encouraging its members to consider making a donation towards the costs of repairing the Richard Colley clock mechanism. If you wish to add to the Society’s support, please email [email protected] for details of how you can do so.

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Zagreb Loves You

In the last almost two months, we have really had the opportunity to see that we are not alone and that our fellow citizens, as well as our visitors or those who are yet to come to us, love ...

https://youtu.be/txZgLExm-vg

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We should never take our daily bread for granted
Anne Sebba reviews Our Daily Bread by Predrag Matvejevic in The Spectator

We should never take our daily bread for granted
In a moving combination of memoir and meditation, Predrag Matvejevic describes how a smuggled loaf to a starving PoW proved a life-saver

"In the seventh and final chapter of this small but lingeringly powerful book, the author reveals his motivation for writing it. His father, he explains, a Russian-born Yugoslav soldier, had been a prisoner of war of the Germans, part of a group consigned to do forced labour felling trees during the bitterly cold winter of 1942-43. One evening, freezing, starving and looking barely human, the group was stopped on the road back to camp by a stranger, a Protestant pastor who invited them into his house and, risking reprisals, nonetheless gave them a chance to warm up and eat some bread with a glass of wine."

Read more.

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'Poezija u gradu' 2020
A project in celebration of the poet August Senoa

Obavještavamo Vas da je danas, točno sedam mjeseci od zagrebačkog potresa, počeo projekt „Poezija u gradu“ u spomen velikanu  hrvatske  književnosti  Augustu Šenoi. S poštovanjem i zahvalnošću u spomen ovom jedinstvenom književnom velikanu građani će na deset osvjetljenih citylight površina u gradu moći čitati neke od njegovih najljepših pjesama: Zagrebu, Tri riječi, Budi svoj, Sunce i zvijezde i Srce pjesnikovo.

August Šenoa umro je u 43. godini života od posljedica upale pluća od koje je obolio kada je uz predan i intenzivan književni rad i kao požrtvovni gradski vijećnik po hladnoći skrbio za unesrećene u velikom zagrebačkom potresu 1880. godine.

Više informacija i fotografije nalaze se u prilogu.
Unaprijed zahvaljujemo na praćenju.

Kontak:
Sonja Zubović, 091 5846 478, [email protected]

PROJEKT „POEZIJA U GRADU“ U SPOMEN VELIKANU
HRVATSKE KNJIŽEVNOSTI AUGUSTU ŠENOI

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The International Trust for Croatian Monuments 
Progress Report 2020

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calendarCroatia 2021

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‘Zagreb’s museums and historic sites are suffering severely’
An article by Sir Timothy Clifford from the Apollo

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calendarCroatia 2021

If you manage to travel to Croatia this summer, remember we would like your photographs for calendarCroatia 2021. If travelling is not going to be possible this year, why not enjoy looking through your photographs taken in Croatia over the years and email some of your happy memories to us for the calendar?

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What is a School? 

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Earthquake Hits Zagreb

The article is taken from the July/August 2020 edition of Minerva magazine, copyright rests with the magazine. For information about the magazine please go to minervamagazine.com.

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Free Books for BCS Members

Celia Hawkesworth has given the following brand new books to the British-Croatian Society for passing on to our members. If you would like a copy, please email in response - they will be allocated on a 'first come, first served basis' and available for collection at British-Croatian Society events (or can be posted to you if you are not in the London area).

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International Trust for Croatian Monuments Progress Report 2019

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Talk Given by Flora Turner

In search of art for Croatia Lecture BCS 12. 6. 2019.

You can view images here.

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Britanski Channel 4 na obilježavanju 110 godina turizma u Kaštelima u Veleposlanstvu RH u Londonu

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calendarCroatia 2020 

Renata Pokupic at the Wigmore Hall

Has  pleasure in inviting you to the Annual Charity Concert in support of Awards for Croatian Young Scientists

Vitaly Pisarenko - Piano

Programme to be announced

Saturday 23th February 2019, 7.30 pm 

Followed by drinks and canapés

33 Frognal, London NW3 6YD

Courtesy of Tony and Gabrijela Suchy

Tickets £30

RSVP with cheques payable to AMAC UK send to:

Zrinka Mikelić Bottrill, 23 Independent Place, London E8 2HE or bank transfer to: AMAC UK, account 00443076 at Lloyds Bank, sort code 30-94-04, quoting your name as reference

Doppelgänger, E.E.G. and Belladonna

Since some of us last met at Conway Hall, there’s been a flurry of coverage for Doppelgänger and E.E.G. But we are thrilled, first of all, to share news that some of you may not know: Belladonna won the Warwick Prize for Women in Translation at an award ceremony last Tuesday at the Warwick Arts Centre. Many congratulations to Celia!

The Financial Times ran a brilliant review of E.E.G. by Eileen Battersby: “Funny, angry, informed and intent on the truth, no voice is quite as beautiful as that of Daša Drndić”

Boyd Tonkin has written a profile of Daša and an excellent review of Belladonna in online culture mag The Arts Desk: You can read it here

And a review of  Doppelgänger on the Rough Ghosts blog here

Katharina wrote a piece about Dasa for Granta’s online feature, Editor’s Chair.

E.E.G was reviewed in the Daily Mail, and it’s not absolutely clear that the reviewer liked the book at all . . . If you like, you can read it here

We also expect a review in the Guardian and White Review, and more besides.

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Register for Croatian Subjects outside Croatia

Central State Office for Croats Abroad invites Croatian subjects to sign the Register for Croatian Subjects outside Croatia.This is a digital base and communication net.

Info letak Registar hrvatskih subjekata izvan Republike Hrvatske

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Berislav Unveils the Eye-Popping Video to the First Part of his Catharsis Trilogy

Berislav is a Croatian dancer, actor, model and singer, whose output is utterly unique, with no greater evidence of this than his incredible video to his track I Gave My Life.

By the age of 9 he had developed a love for dancing and started attending Tihana Škrinjarić school of dance before a move to Austria saw his dancing talent develop yet further. At the age of 18 he returned to Zagreb where he began a modelling career and embarked on numerous projects with Croatian music artists as well as participating in theatrical productions such as Hair.

Determined to be the very best at everything he was involved with he moved briefly to Los Angeles to attend the Sanford Meisner acting school in 2012, leading to acting roles in TV series and a number of commercials. Having signed a record deal with Croatia Records in 2015, he enjoyed his first full forays into recorded music, his first single being “Singing that Rock n Roll”, a cover of a song previously recorded by Stijene and featuring what has now become something of a trademark lavish and theatrical video.

Bringing the story bang up to date, Berislav has forged a partnership with James Perri (aka Jimi Polo), the producer known for his work with David Guetta and Daft Punk, and the two of them started collaborating fully in 2017, the first fruits of which is “I Gave My Life”. The track is the first part of the trilogy, the beginning of a journey, the clash between life and death and also features in the documentary film, 14 Barriers about a Croatian War veteran. The accompanying video is a tour de force of action, emotion and, in the very truest sense of the word, fantastic visuals.

Berislav acts as an Art Director for Taja fashion brand since 2003 and is the owner of an exclusive Health Club.

www.berislav.eu

 

www.quitegreat.co.uk

calendarCroatia 2019

Now that the holiday season is coming to an end, it is time to remind you that we would like to see your photographs for the 2019 calendarCroatia and exhibition.

We invite you to submit photographs in preparation for the British-Croatian Society's next calendarCroatia.

The calendar will be printed and for sale in November. There will be a launch party to which all photographers will be invited.

We are looking for photographs that show Croatia in all its variety, not only as a beautiful place for a holiday. Photographs are invited from professionals and amateurs of any nationality, in as high a resolution as possible. People, places, abstract - all subjects and techniques are welcome.

Please note that if you want your photographs to the considered for the printed calendar, they will need to be landscape format photographs. For the exhibition, photographs can be landscape or portrait.

High quality photographs can be taken on a smart phone, so please tell your family and friends about calendarCroatia 2019.

You can send up to 4 of your photographs, with the photographer's name and the title of the photographs, to us at [email protected].

Let us have your photographs as soon as you can, but not later than October 20.

If you have any questions, you can also contact us at this address [email protected]

 

calendarCroatia 2017 options

Collection in person £8.00 GBP Post and package for the UK £8.00 GBP Post and package for anywhere else £12.00 GBP

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 The International Trust for Croatian Monuments 

You can see progress report for the International Trust for Croatian Monuments here.

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Yugoslavia's Lost Utopias

New York's MoMA has a magnificent exhibition entitled Yugoslavia's Lost Utopias covering the country's monumental postwar architecture. It has been reviewed in this weekend's Financial Times. You may not be able to travel to see it, but the Financial Times article and other reviews are available online.

Information about a production of Tena Stivicic's 3 Winters

The update from "The Cells that Unite us: the Story of a Fortunate Immigrant"

British Croatian Society members had an amazing opportunity to attend talk by Dr Gabrijela Kocjan on 22 May 2018 at the Jubilee Room of House of Commons.

The aim of the talk was to raise awareness of the contribution that Croatian immigrants make to the UK and to confirm that immigration benefits not just the migrants themselves, but also the UK. 

Here are the links to text and the presentation from the talk.

Olja Savičević
Farewell, Cowboy

General Meeting

You are invited to the Annual General Meeting of the British-Croiatian Society to be held at 18-30 on January 24 in the Croatian Embassy 21 Conway Street, London W1T 6BN.

Cambridge Society of Croatia

I run the Cambridge Society of Croatia.  We are currently updating our records for all alumni of the University who either are Croatian or live in Croatia or (even) have an interest in Croatia.   

We have just started a facebook page which can be found here.

Nicholas Frankopan

[email protected]

07818892524
0207 193 8901

• sending a cheque to Peter Elborn, British-Croatian Society,
  5 Well Road, London NW3 1LH
• by bank transfer to The British Croatian Society, account 60566500 at Barclays Oxford City Centre branch, sort code 20-65-18, quoting your name as reference.

Help us find the missing Bukovac

Please see the attached newspaper item 'Help us find the missing Bukovac'.

“LOUDEST SILENT FILM” TO HOLD UK PREMIERE IN HULL

The International Trust for Croatian Monuments 
Progress Report

A reminder of the British-Croatian Society's calendarCroatia 2018

We invite you to send us photographs taken in 20017 in Croatia for a Christmas / New Year card, an exhibition and for a 2018 calendar.

25 photographs will be selected to feature in the calendar. One photograph will be selected for the Christmas / New Year card. In addition we will feature some 40 photographs in an exhibition to be held at the gallery of the Croatian Embassy in London on November 30.  Calendars and cards will be available for purchase at the British-Croatian Society's annual dinner on November 23, at the exhibition opening and online.

We are looking for photographs that show Croatia in all its variety, not only as a scenically beautiful place for a holiday. Photographs are invited from professionals and amateurs of any nationality, in as high a resolution as possible. People, places, abstract - all subjects and techniques are welcome.   High quality photographs can be taken on a smart phone, so please tell your family and friends about calendarCroatia 2018.

Please send up to 4 of your photographs with the photographer's name and the title of the photographs to us at [email protected].

Let us have your photographs as soon as you can, but not later than October 20.
If you have any questions, you can also contact us at this address.
Here is the information for the latest THIRTEEN photographic exhibition. 

News from the Nemon Studio, Boars Hill near Oxford

MEETING G2.3

Attached is an invitation letter (Croatian and English version) for the conference ‘MEETING G2.3 – CROATIA, FULL OF BUSINESS POTENTIAL’ that will take place on 6 - 8 November this year in Zagreb at the FORUM Zagreb congress centre.

Lit Link Festival

The Lit Link Festival in Croatia is a three-day tour whose participants are writers, editors and publishers. This year the motto of the Lit Link Festival is “Despite Brexit” and the guests are British writers, editors and publishers. At previous festivals, guests have come from the following countries: 2013 – USA; 2014 – Canada; 2015 – France; 2016 – Italy. The festival consists of three evening readings in which both Croatian authors and British authors participate. Translations are completed beforehand and will be projected onto a large screen during the readings. The readings will take place in the northern coastal cities of Pula (29th June, Centar Rojc) and Rijeka (30th June, Astronomski centar), as well as the inland capital, Zagreb (1st July, Club Močvara/Mochvara).

This is a conservation project led by Jurica Matijevic, Art Academy, Split, nine devoted young people, doing excellent work. We hope that the workshop will develop into an international project, like the one on Lopud.

BREXIT

The design of biology and robotics - Mirko Kovac

A discussion at the Royal Institution of the increasingly connected fields of science and design. This event will feature Daisy Ginsberg's multi-disciplinary work in synthetic biology and a talk from Mirko Kovac about how nature is influencing the design of aerial robots. 

May 10, 7.00pm to 9.30pm

For more information, please go to: www.rigb.org

Mirko Kovac is director of the Aerial Robotics Laboratory at the Aeronautics Department at Imperial College London. His research interest is the conception and implementation of novel mobility solutions for robotics and agent based autonomous manufacturing. Before his appointment in London, he was post-doctoral researcher at at Harvard University and he obtained his PhD at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology. He has delivered keynote lectures and talks on bio-inspired robotics at leading research institutions and conferences world wide. He is also advisor to the UK government on the topic of aerial robotics and is regularly consulting on technology foresight and strategy development for industry. 

Ambassador Andrew Dalgleish on Brexit and rights of UK citizens in Croatia

https://youtu.be/585WBofEktY

Poziv

International Summer Music School Pucisca

More information here.

International Summer Music School Pucisca taking place on the Island of Brac.

International conservation workshop on the island of Lopud.
Please see attached article.

Vuk Eisen, an active member of the British-Croatian Society, died last year. Below is the text of the address Tim Eisen gave at his father's memorial service.

Hrvatska matica iseljenika

Hrvatska matica iseljenika i ove godine organizira svoje tradicionalne ljetne programe koji podrazumijevaju ucenje hrvatskoga jezika i kulture: Sveucilisnu skolu hrvatskoga jezika i kulture i Malu skolu hrvatskoga jezika i kulture. Također, u proljetnome semestru (6. ozujka 2017.) nastavljamo s provođenjem Hrvatskog internetskog tecaja HiT-1.

U privitku Vam saljemo kratke obavijesti.

Molimo Vas da ovu informaciju proslijedite svima za koje smatrate da bi bili zainteresirani. Detaljne informacije o ovim programima, kao i o ostalim programima i aktivnostima Hrvatske matice iseljenika, nalaze se na nasoj mreznoj stranici www.matis.hr.

Zahvaljujuci na suradnji, srdacno pozdravljam.

Lada Kanajet Šimić, prof.

HRVATSKA MATICA ISELJENIKA
Odjel za školstvo, znanost i šport
Dept. of Education, Science and Sport
Trg S. Radića 3, 10000 Zagreb, Croatia

tel: 385 1 61 15 116, fax: 385 1 61 11 522
e-mail: [email protected]

The fourth Croatian World Games are to be held in the Croatian capital Zagreb from 18-22 July 2017 with a global participation of more than 800 Croats from over 35 nations. Croatian World Games are amateur competitions where participants are Croats and their descendants throughout the world representing the country that they live in now.

Croatian World Games previously held in Zadar in 2006 and 2010 and in Zagreb in 2014, are organised by the Croatian World Congress and the State Office For Croats Abroad, in association with other Croatian institutions and associations in Croatia and among the Croatian diasporas.

All Croats wherever they may be are invited to participate in the Croatian World Games which include multiple sports disciplines; athletics, bowls, judo, karate, basketball, football, indoor soccer, volleyball, beach volleyball, swimming, rugby, handball, tennis, table tennis, taekwondo and water polo.

Our wish is for a great number of participants, as well as representatives of the Croatian organisations worldwide, to take the opportunity to compete in sports, and to share companionship and participate in numerous cultural and entertainment events that will contribute towards strengthening of their ties with the Republic of Croatia and enhancing of their sense of belonging to the Croatian people.

If you wish to take part in the upcoming Croatian World Games please visit the following link to register by 1 April 2017.

Nostalgic Journey with Frano Lasić and klapa Smrika

A humanitarian concert for the homeless children of Dubrovnik and Belgrade will take place at the Cadogan Hall in London on April 2 - details in the attachment or from Cadogan Hall.

Annual General Meeting

Please hold in your diaries:

Tuesday 21 February 2017 1830 – 2030
for the Annual General Meeting of the British Croatian Society.

The Agenda for the meeting will follow.
Robert Dolata
Secretary

NIMBUS CD recording of NICHOLAS JACKSON’S OPERA THE ROSE AND THE RING 

‘Bijelo Dugme’ concert

There will be a ‘Bijelo Dugme’ concert at Hammersmith Apollo Theatre in Feb 23rd 

http://www.eventimd

School of Croatian Language and Culture ‘Šibenik’

Information about the School of Croatian Language and Culture ‘Šibenik’, intended for the Croatian diaspora and Croatian students, is in the attachment, or can be viewed on the website www.sv-lovre.com.

(For children aged 3 - 7)

A musical rendition of this charming story of how Hedgemond defends his humble house, while teaching us a lesson about caring for what we love.
Presented by Istros books and the children of the Croatian Saturday School, London.

William Goodenough House
35-42 Mecklenburgh Square, London WC1N 2AN
October 23, 12 noon & 2pm, Tickets: £3
BOOK YOUR TICKETS HERE
Telephone: 020 3108 1000 Mon - Fri, 12noon - 6pm

The Art Newspaper

Croatian heritage has a friend in Britain

Over the past 25 years, the International Trust for Croatian Monuments has raised more than £500,000 to repair the ravages of war.

Read more here.

Lunchtime Lecture: Ivan Meštrović, Croatian Sculptor and his portraits

Flora Turner-Vucetic looks at the art and life of Ivan Mestrovic (1883 – 1962), Croatian sculptor, painter, draughtsman, architect, writer and poet through a discussion of his portraits. In partnership with the Society of Portrait Sculptors.

17 November 2016, 13:15
Ondaatje Wing Theatre, National Portrait Gallery
Tickets: £3 (£2 concessions and Gallery Supporters) Book online, or visit the Gallery in person.
Doors open at 12.45. Lectures begin at 13.15 and last approximately one hour.

Ivan Meštrović (1883 – 1962) from an early age gained a significant international artistic reputation exhibiting at major exhibitions in Vienna, Paris, Prague, Rome, London, Zagreb and New York in the first decades of the twentieth century. His one man show in 1915 at the Victoria and Albert Museum was a sensational event received by public and critics with great acclaim. He also inspired a discussion between the modernists and traditionalists and even raising doubts in some quarters about the effect of his nudes on public morals. He became a celebrity with much demand for his portrait sculpture. One of the early acquisitions by what eventually became known as the Tate Gallery was a very important “Deposition from the Cross”. Michael Sadler, Rector of theLeeds School of Art, wrote in 1915: “In you, we salute the greatest sculptor of religious sculpture since the Renaissance”. Meštrović donated his self-portrait in plaster for the collection. Flora Turner-Vučetić revives the memory of the art and life of this exceptional artist through a discussion of his portraits which were in many cases an expression of his respect and admiration for his subjects.

Flora Turner-Vučetić is an art historian, museum curator, diplomat, journalist and writer. She has worked as a Senior Curator in the Museum of Arts and Crafts in Zagreb, a broadcast journalist and editor at the Croatian Section of the BBC World Service, London, and as Counsellor for cultural, scientific and educational affairs at the Embassy of the Republic of Croatia in London. She was one of the founders and a past Chairman of the British-Croatian Society and remains a Trustee. She is presently a writer, freelance journalist and researcher. She has organised numerous exhibitions in the UK and regularly publishes mainly on visual arts and British Croatian artistic and cultural relations, as for example Mapping Croatia in United Kingdom Collections, Archaeopress, Oxford, 2013. She contributed to the symposium about Ivan Meštrović at the Victoria and Albert Museum in 2015 and to the special isssue of the Sculpture Journal dedicated to Meštrović in 2016.

A defining moment in European and transatlantic resilience: Croatian perspectives

Kolinda Grabar-Kitarović, the President of the Republic of Croatia, will speak at LSEE on Tuesday, 11 October. The talk is entitled: "A defining moment in European and transatlantic resilience: Croatian perspectives". The event is free and open to all but registration is required. Register for the event here.

Our mailing address is:
London School of Economics
Houghton Street, London, London WC2A 2AE

LSEE Visiting Speaker Programme, Wednesday 12 October

Croatia's Lost Generation? Youth unemployment, education and training in Croatia since the crisis

Spaker: Dr Iva Tomić, Institute of Economics, Zagreb
Chaired by Dr Vassilis Monastiriotis, LSEE Research on SEE, LSE European Institute

Dr Iva Tomić holds a tenure-track affiliation as a Research Associate at the Institute of Economics, Zagreb in Croatia. She was awarded a PhD degree in Economics from the University of Ljubljana, Slovenia in 2013. Her main research interests are labour economics, applied microeconomics and public finances. During her visit at LSEE she will be working on youth unemployment issues in European countries, with a special emphasis on the Croatian case and its cross comparison with other Southern European countries.

Read more about the event here.

Date: Wednesday, 12 October 2016
Time: 18:00 - 19:30
Venue: Canada Blanch room, 1st floor, Cowdray House (COW), London School of Economics, London WC2A 2AE (LSE Campus Map)
The event operates on a first come, first served basis.

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All the Best - Croatian romantic comedy

Attached you will find a press release about the UK premiere of a Croatian romantic comedy "All the Best” directed by Snjezana Tribuson to be screened at the forthcoming Raindance Film Festival in London.

Photos and press release.

London Film Festival
Croatian films at the London Film Festival and Raindance

On the Other Side - S one strane
A middle-aged nurse in Zagreb receives an unwelcome phone call in this profound analysis unspoken fears and disguised trauma. Vesna is a middle aged nurse living in Zagreb with two grown up children – her son Vladimir, a married businessman with one son, and her daughter Jadranka, a law graduate who is about to be married. One day, Vesna receives a phone call from her husband Žarko in Belgrade. Neither Vlado nor Jadranka, who have had to hide their surnames, want to see him. After all, he appears to have been convicted of war crimes. But repeated phone calls between Vesna and Žarko edges them towards resurrecting their relationship. Dealing with the psychological aftermath of war, Zrinko Ogresta’s film is comprised of stately camera movements and carefully composed images, focusing on Vesna’s face and the spaces around her. He creates an introspective mood that perfectly captures the feelings of his characters. The result is a profound analysis of absence and of disguised trauma, of unspoken fears and their effects on a new generation.

Monday 10 October 2016 20:45
Vue West End Cinema, Screen 7

If you wish to keep in touch with what is happening and would like to join our email list, please email [email protected]

The Bromley Guitar Society presents a classical guitar recital by the internationally renowned Croatian guitarist Zoran Dukic on Saturday 15th October 2016 at 7.30pm. This recital will mark his UK debut. He will be playing at St Mark's Church,Westmoreland Rd,Bromley, BR2 0TB. A few minutes walk from Bromley South Station.

Advance adult tickets £12.50. £14 on the door (cash only).

For more information about Zoran and how to obtain tickets, please visit: bromleyguitarsociety.blogspot.co.uk. Online tickets are available from the 26th August.

Contact us: [email protected]

Meet-Up

The next British Croatian Society Meet-Up takes place on Thursday 22 September 2016.
We will be meeting at a new venue, the Zander Bar in St. James’ Court Hotel, Westminster.

The intention is for people with any form of interest in Croatia to meet up, socialise and have a chat in an informal atmosphere. Whether you are a Croatian resident in London or someone who has recently visited Croatia for the first time and want to know more, this event is for you.

The event is of course open to both members and non-members. It provides an excellent opportunity for anyone to come and meet British-Croatian Society members and even to join if they so wish!

We have a reserved area on the left hand side of the bar. BCS members Brian Gallagher and John Pindar will be there from the start and you can find us by looking out for Croatian symbols.

Please note the Zander Bar is more formally known as the Bank Westminster and Zander Bar.
You should use the entrance to the right of the hotel, marked Bank Westminster.

We’ll be there between 7.30 PM and 10 PM.

Come along for a chat about all things Croatian!

Address: 45 Buckingham Gate, London SW1E 6BS (Our venue is identifiable by four large flags)

Nearest Tube stations: St James Park (District/Circle line). Follow exit signs for Palmer Street, ignore those for Broadway.

For full location details click here.

We will shortly be sending you details of the 2016 annual dinner, but in the meantime you may like to make a note of the date - November 4.

I, WHO HAVE HANDS MORE INNOCENT at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival.

The performance is based on the works of Vesna Parun, exploring her autobiographical works to give a chilling insight into the aspects of women's lives challenged by the patriarchal men of the Balkans. Performed by Vesna Tominac Matacic and directed by Ivan Leo Lemo, the piece is performed fully in Croatian with English subtitles and it has been gaining interest as a celebration of Vesna Parun's magnificent poetry and works.

http://www.hrt.hr/enz/vijesti- iz-kulture/

I, WHO HAVE HANDS MORE INNOCENT is performed daily until the 28th August at 19:25-20:35, this performance is at Zoo Venues 140 Pleasance Road Edinburgh EH8 9RR.

Tickets information

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Croatian majorette team

A Croatian majorette team from Orebić is competing at the 2016 European Majorette Championships in Crawley on 8-9 October.

They are a team composed of 26 girls and boys at the ages between 6-8 years.

They are asking for financial support in order to be able to participate at this event (covering travel, accommodation expenses).

If you think you might be able to help, please contact:
Sanda Menkadžiev at [email protected] m.hr

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Utopian Collective

The inaugural London Design Biennale opens in September at Somerset House with over 30 countries presenting newly commissioned works exploring the theme Utopia by Design.

A new collective of 8 Croatian designers ‘Utopian Collective’ are collaborating to create an interdisciplinary platform that looks at the role of design in society and as a catalyst for change. They also explore the experimentation inherent to collaborative work which encourages evolution.

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The play that is Oscar Wild

Jagoda Kamov is a Croatian actress who will perform in an Oscar Wild Play 'The play that is Oscar Wild' as a part of Camden Fringe festival. Click here for more details.

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Croatia and Brexit

The Government of the Republic of Croatia regrets the outcome of the British referendum in which a majority of voters supported the option of the UK leaving the European Union. Croatia will work to create a stronger and democratic European Union together with other member states, and will continue to further develop bilateral relations with the United Kingdom.

The legal status of Croatian citizens living and working in the UK will not change for a considerable time. There are no changes in travel regulations. The Croatian Embassy in London will provide information about any new important changes. You can contact the Embassy by writing to: [email protected]

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Southgate Opera present Bizet's tragic tale of passion set in the sultry atmosphere of southern Spain. Sung in English with full orchestral accompaniment. Tenor Stephen Cviic takes the role of Don Jose in the performances on Wednesday 8^th and Friday 10^th June.

Multilingual Imaginations: Celebrating Asymptote’s 5th Anniversary in London

Here is a write-up of the Asymptote anniversary event with Tena Štivičić

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The Concrete Utopia. Ivan Picelj and New Tendencies 1961-1973

Thu 26th May 2016 to Fri 22nd Jul 2016
Cortesy Gallery 41 & 43 Maddox Street, London W1S 2PD
Monday – Friday: 10am – 6pm, Saturday: 12pm – 6pm
Admission free

Cortesi Gallery is delighted to present The Concrete Utopia: Ivan Picelj and New Tendencies 1961–1973, an exhibition that explores the neo avant-garde of the sixties and seventies via the work of Croatian artist Ivan Picelj (1924–2011). As one of the founders of the New Tendencies movement, Picelj’s work presents a fascinating opportunity to re-examine this exciting period.

Curated by Ilaria Bignotti, the retrospective features more than 40 works by Picelj, retracing the significant developments of one of the movement’s leading figures. Picelj is renowned for his persistent pursuit of the perfect relationship between perception and knowledge. Through his rigorous ideation and infinite patience for repetition, his forms become a concrete utopia, created as a better way to see, feel and experience the everyday in life.

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Meet-Up

The next Meet-Up takes place on Wednesday 18 May.

We will be meeting at the National Theatre (downstairs) on the South Bank. There has been a recent refurbishment of the bar area which of course also serves tea and coffee.

The intention is for people with any form of interest in Croatia to meet up, socialise and have a chat in an informal atmosphere. Whether you are a Croatian resident in London or someone who has recently visited Croatia for the first time and want to know more, this event is for you.

The event is of course open to both members and non-members. It provides an excellent opportunity for anyone to come and meet British-Croatian Society members and even to join if they so wish!

We hope to bag a table early on in the bar area on the ground floor. BCS members Brian Gallagher and John Pindar will be there from the start and you can find us by looking out for Croatian symbols.

We’ll be there between 7.30 PM and 10 PM.

Come along for a chat about all things Croatian!

National Theatre: Upper Ground, South Bank
Nearest Tube stations: Embankment, Waterloo
Full location details: http://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk

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The THIRTEEN

The THIRTEEN will exhibit at the Croatian Embassy, 21 Conway Street, London W1T 6BN from May 20 to June 30.

THIRTEEN is an outstanding group of professional and accomplished amateur photographers.

Private view May 20, 18-30 - 20-30.

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World Premiere of William Thackeray opera

Sir Nicholas Jackson composes new opera based on William Thackeray’s The Rose and the Ring,

First public performance will take place at Thackeray’s old school at The Charterhouse in the centre of London in May

Composer Sir Nicholas Jackson will be conducting his latest work, The Rose and the Ring on Wednesday 4 May at Drapers livery Hall, followed by the first public performance at The Charterhouse, London on Thursday 5 May. The opera, based on the novel by William Thackeray will include an array of young and exciting singers, including Kathleen Ferrier finalist Robyn Parton. They will be joined by the ‘Concertante of London’, led byMadeleine Easton, who has recently performed with the ‘English Baroque’ soloists and the ‘King’s Consort’.

The Rose and the Ring is based on one of Thackeray’s lesser known works, located in the fictional kingdom of Pafflagonia. Magic, royalty and romance dominate the themes of Thackeray’s novel. For Nicholas, it was an obvious choice for an opera, “My Grandfather had known Thackeray’s daughter and one day when rummaging through some books that I had inherited I came across a worn copy of her father’s The Rose & the Ring. Although written as a ‘children’s pantomime’ it is an equally good read for grown-ups with ingenious twists, I just couldn’t believe that this had not occurred to anybody else”.

The score is set to adaptations and orchestrations of Keyboard Sonatas by Scarlatti, a composer whose sonatas Sir Nicholas has had a long affiliation with. “As a harpsichordist I had performed and recorded about 40 of his sonatas and played through a great many more. I had also recently recorded for Nimbus my arrangement of one of his sonatas for Wind Quartet and Harpsichord. It has been said that all the sounds that Scarlatti would have heard, if he had opened a window of his house in 18^th century Madrid, are contained in the microcosm of his 550 sonatas including flamenco dancing, castanets, the strumming of guitars and the wail of gypsy laments. But the gaiety of his music is sometimes overwhelmed by a surge of operatic passion.”

The public premiere of this work will be staged at The Charterhouse (5 May) in the very same building Thackeray would have visited daily during his time at the school in the 19^thcentury. On 7 May the cast will be recording the work in its entirety to be released later in the year. It will undoubtedly highlight Jackson’s knowledgeable interpretation of Scarlatti as well as his dedication to raising the profile of exciting young artists.

http://jacksonmusic.co.uk/

For ticket reservations (10am-3pm Monday - Friday) please contact Dawn Woodford at The Charterhouse on 0207 253 9503, Ext. 2

For press enquiries, please contact:
Valerie Barber PR
Suite 2
9a St John’s Wood High Street
London NW8 7NG

Tel: +44 (0)20 7586 8560

[email protected]
www.vbpr.co.uk

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Meet-Up

Our next Meet-Up takes place on Wednesday 23 March.

We will be meeting the National Theatre (downstairs) on the South Bank. There has been a recent refurbishment of the bar area which of course also serves tea and coffee.

The intention is for people with any form of interest in Croatia to meet up, socialise and have a chat in an informal atmosphere. Whether you are a Croatian resident in London or someone who has recently visited Croatia for the first time and want to know more, this event is for you.

The event is of course open to both members and non-members. It provides an excellent opportunity for anyone to come and meet British-Croatian Society members and even to join if they so wish!

We hope to bag a table early on in the bar area on the ground floor. BCS members Brian Gallagher and John Pindar will be there from the start and you can find us by looking out for Croatian symbols.

We’ll be there between 7.30 PM and 10 PM.

Come along for a chat about all things Croatian!

National Theatre: Upper Ground, South Bank
Nearest Tube stations: Embankment, Waterloo
Full location details: www.nationaltheatre.org.uk

Music for Holy Week

Monday 21 March, 7.30pm, St Paul’s Church, Covent Garden, Bedford Street, London, WC2E 9ED

The Elysian Singers, including tenor Stephen Cviic, conducted by Sam Laughton, present five centuries of penitential psalm settings from all around Europe: from France to Estonia, from Italy to Denmark. Mini-masterpieces by Mendelssohn (‘Hear my Prayer’) and Arvo Pärt (‘An den Wassern zu Babel’) rub shoulders with English choral favourites by Purcell and Howells.

Tickets: £15 (concessions for the unwaged £10), available from www.wegottickets.com

Nearest stations: Covent Garden and Leicester Square

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A Pair of Sparkling Eyes

Friday 18 March, 7.30pm, St Paul's Church, Rectory Grove, Clapham, London SW4

Tenor Stephen Cviic, soprano Antonia Cviic and other members of St Paul's Opera present an evening of operatic highlights with a romantic theme, including excerpts from Bizet's Carmen, Mozart’s The Magic Flute, and music by Handel and Puccini, among others. Tickets include a glass of wine.

Tickets: £15 (concessions £12) on the door or in advance from www.wegottickets.com/StPaulsOpera

Nearest stations: Clapham Common tube and Wandworth Road Overground.

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You are reminded that you are invited to the Annual General Meeting and a committee meeting of the British-Croatian Society to be held on Tuesday 8 March at 18.30 at the Croatian Embassy, 21 Conway Street, London W1T 6BN.

The meeting will include a report of the year and plans for the future, an update on the Society's membership and finances, as well as the appointment of trustees and committee members.

We are always looking for new ideas and would very much welcome your presence.

On Saturday 5th of March, the Croatian Supplementary School in London is organising a workshop called Raising a Bilingual Child: Learning Together.

The workshop aims to support parents in bringing up children to be bilingual by sharing solutions to the challenges they encounter and exploring practical strategies for enhancing learning.

The workshop will take place at Croatian Embassy.

The workshop starts at 10am and it will finish around 11.30am.

The event is free, but you must register to attend. Please email [email protected] to book your place.

Leap Summit
5 -7 May 2016, Zagreb

Message from the Croatian Embassy in London

Leap Summit will gather more than 1,000 young people who are entrepreneurs, NGO leaders, students, leaders and opinion leaders in their respective communities. Main themes of the Leap Summit will be connected to innovations, entrepreneurship, modern technologies, career development and success stories. The Summit is under patronage of President of Republic of Croatia and is highly supported by University of Zagreb. The Leap Summit international conference hopes to gather a lot of Croatian participants who live outside of Croatia, to exchange ideas and positive experiences.

You can download pdf here.

MIMIKA is excellent jazz orchestra formed from a younger generation of London based jazz soloists and run by Croatian composer and conductor Mak Murtić and singer Maja Rivić. They will play a gig in one of the best jazz clubs in London, Vortex in Dalston.

For further information, please go to:

www.vortexjazz.co.uk
www.facebook.com/events/456148251245920/

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The Croatian Embassy has passed to us information about the project Vukovar Water Tower - Symbol of Croatian Unity received from representatives of the City of Vukovar. For further information, please contact the City of Vukovar:

Dr. Franje Tudjmana 1
32000 Vukovar
CROATIA
Tel. +385 32 456 524
Fax. +385 32 456 570

You can download pdf here.

Here is the link to hear the recording of the fantastic concert of Croatian pianist Dejan Lazić in the Wigmore Hall on 18th of January in the BBC Radio 3 series 'Wigmore Hall Mondays'.

At the end of concert he played his own composition '3 Istrian Dances Op 15a '.

Croatian countertenor Max Emanuel Cencic

The famous Croatian countertenor Max Emanuel Cencic gave a concert at the Wigmore Hall on 27th of December. Click here to see a review of the concert.

Adrian Chiles BBC programme

You may like to know about this BBC programme that is now available on iPlayer.

My Mediterranean with Adrian Chiles, Episode 1 www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b06vngp4

This is what the BBC says:
Adrian Chiles converted to Catholicism ten years ago, but wonders whether his choice of church was an accident of birth and geography. If he had been born in Istanbul or Jerusalem, would he have been equally happy being a Muslim or a Jew? In this first episode, he visits the stunning Dalmatian coast, where he meets up with his Croatian mum and reveals how he got the nickname Holy Joe.

Next stop is Istanbul, where he has fun in the Grand Bazaar before heading out on the Bosphorus with a Muslim fisherman. During Eid al-Adha, a major Islamic festival, Adrian struggles to watch the celebratory sacrifice. He travels to Jerusalem for the Jewish festival of Sukkot, and then moves on to Tel-Aviv to get drunk with a gay, atheist, Jewish celebrity chef. His final stop is an Evangelical concert by the Dead Sea, attended by Christians from all over the world.

Dejan Lazic has a lunch time piano concert at the Wigmore Hall on January 18. For details, please visit wigmore-hall.org.uk

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You may be interested in this radio interview with Gordana Johnson on the British-Croatian Society's photographic exhibition photographingCroatia.

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Peter Frankopan's 'The Silk Roads' is number 1 in the Daily Telegraph's UK non fiction list. We hope to have a talk by Peter in our 2016 programme. For more information about the book and Peter, please go to www.bloomsbury.com

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We have a full programme planned for 2016. If you are not a member and would like to support us by joining, please go to our website www.britishcroatiansociety.com.

2015 – a bumper year at the British-Croatian Society

A challenge: how many Croatian writers’ books are available to read in English? (we will give you the answer in a moment) London has seen Croatian authors, from established figures such as Daša Drndić to some of the many exciting new writers, at the Croatian stand at the London Book Fair each year. This generates a lot of interest. We spotted an opportunity to help British readers with an interest in Croatia, but no knowledge of Croatian, by publishing Writing Croatia. This lists Croatian fiction translated into English, as well as fiction set in Croatia by non-Croats, and a section of non-fiction books.

The answer to our question is that we have so far found 108 books by Croatian fiction writers that are available in English listed in Writing Croatia (there are probably more – so if you know of some we have missed, please tell us).

Writing Croatia is a follow-up to Mapping Croatia, a guide to Croatian works of art in UK museums and galleries, which we published as part of the Welcome Croatia festival in 2013. There are many more Croatian works in the UK than you might think, most of them in public museums to be seen free of charge. If you would like copies, both are available free of charge by emailing us at our address below.

How can Croatia make an impact in the UK? It is not easy. One way we tried for the first 6 months of 2015 was to build on the Croatian involvement with the London Book Fair, adding to it other events and branding them as

creativeCroatia
bringing contemporary Croatia to London in 2015

Various organizations were involved - the embassy fielded many of them – and we used the logo on our activities. The highlight was the embassy’s inclusion of the bronze sculpture of the young athlete recovered from the Adriatic in 1999 in the British Museum ‘Defining Beauty’ exhibition.

With the embassy we organized creativeCroatia events such as the concert with Diana Brekalo and friends that raised nearly £1,000 for the English section of the library of the school in Gunja destroyed by floods, and the presentation by Vanja Žanko at the ArtEco Gallery that brought us bang up to date with the contemporary art scene in Croatia.

It is always good to hear Dr Ivan Grdesić, the Croatian Ambassador, talk. We put him together with Peter Sanfey, a senior economist at EBRD (the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development) at an ‘in conversation’ event. EBRD has invested 3.1 billion euros in Croatia so bringing them together provoked a good relaxed discussion of current political and economic issues (if you want to know more about EBRD, you can do so at www.ebrd.com/croatia.html).

EBRD has been a good partner of the British-Croatian Society over the years in hosting the Chris Cviić memorial lecture. Chris was an influential figure on Croatian and Balkan issues and at one time worked at EBRD. This year Boris Vujčić, the Governor of the Croatian National Bank, gave a detailed presentation on the economy.

Tena Stivičić, one of Croatia’s foremost literary figures, later in the year appeared at another ‘in conversation’. With Roy Cross (a former British Council Director in Croatia) they talked about her play ‘3 Winters’ that ran to excellent reviews at the National Theatre, as well as ranging more widely over her work as a playwright.

It is always exciting to find someone who has been profoundly influenced by Croatia. Melanie Hodge is such a person. Melanie has taken the Croatian naïve tradition of reverse oil paintings on glass and made it her own. Her British-Croatian Society exhibition ‘Though A Looking Glass’ at Conway Hall was, according to Martha May of Conway Hall, “one of the most popular exhibitions we’ve held”. For more on Melanie and her work, please go to www.mjhodge.co.uk, or follow her on instagram: Melanie hodge; Twitter: @mjhodge: or Facebook: MJHodge Art and Illustration.

Flora Turner’s knowledge and appreciation of the arts is always impressive and she was on good form when she delivered a talk entitled ‘The Painted Coast’. With superb illustrations, she introduced the audience to the works of British painters in 18th, 19t and 20th century who visited Istria and Dalmatia. Earlier in the year she was the key component in the British-Croatian Society supported Victoria & Albert Museum symposium on Mesštrović, marking the 100th anniversary of his V & A exhibition in 1915.

The Society’s annual dinner was held this year at the prestigious East India Club, an extraordinary ‘home from home for gentlemen’ in the heart of London’s clubland. There can hardly be a more old-fashioned English location for a British-Croatian Society event!

Sensationally good photographs in our final event of the year: photographingCroatia brought together at the embassy the best of the photographs taken in Croatia submitted to us by amateurs and professionals. A fun event to bring to a close a good year for the British-Croatian Society.

Adriatica.net looking for help at their stand on the World Travel Market

Adriatica.net will have their stand on the World Travel Market and have asked if we know anyone that speaks Croatian and that lives in London that would be available to work on their stand for the duration of the fair – 2-5 November from 9am to 6pm at London Excel. The person will have to distribute brochures and help with enquiries.

Please, do let me know if you know someone and we will then put them in contact with Adriatica.net.

Ivana Gavric

Fresh from being awarded 'Record of the Year' for her Grieg Piano Works disc by the Grieg Society and the Norwegian Ambassador in the UK last week, pianist Ivana Gavric will be performing Grieg's ever-popular Piano Concerto this Thursday, 8th October, at St James' Piccadilly at 7-30pm.

More information can be found at www.orchestraofthecity.com

Memorial unveiled to one of Plymouth's greatest sons - former Labour leader Michael Foot

On Friday a memorial was unveiled in Plymouth to Michael Foot, a previous Patron of the British-Croatian Society and a keen supporter of Croatia. The Society made a modest contribution to funding for the memorial.

THIRTEEN
in the Gallery of the Embassy of Croatia
28 May - 1 July 2015

Private view
28 May, 6.30-8.30pm
21 Conway Street, London W1T 6BN

In THIRTEEN, a diverse group of amateur and professional photographers work without the constraint of a single theme, each showing one side of their creativity. The images in the exhibition span a selection of photographic genres and techniques - colour or monochrome, traditional darkroom processing or digital manipulation.

For each of these photographers, in addition to the artistic and technical choice of subject and method, taking photographs is a means of individual expression - each image has a unique personal stamp.

Viewers are invited to consider each image on its own as well as in relation to the group, for their visual pleasure.

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May 19, 2015, 1pm
St Martin-in-the-Fields

Free Lunchtime Concert: St Martin's Embassy Series
Diana Brekalo

Croatian Literary Events

Croatia will again have a stand at the London Book Fair in April and Croatian literary events will take place at the Fair and elsewhere. The Tristram Bates Theatre, just off Leicester Square, is an ideal intimate small theatre for the following event based on the English version of Olja

Marko Cindrić is a theatre and TV actor. He is also Artistic Director-Producer of Nu:Write Theatre Festival Zagreb.

Ivica Buljan is an award-winning Croatian theatre director with international experience. He is the theatre and art director of zagrebtheatrefestival.hr.

Nataša Janjić is an award-winning stage actress. Since 2006, she has worked at the Zagreb City Drama Theatre, Gavella.

creativeCroatia
bringing contemporary Croatia to London in 2015

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V&A Ivan Mestrovic Symposium

To mark the centenary of the hugely important exhibition of Ivan Mestrovic in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London in 1915, the Victoria and Albert Museum is holding a symposium devoted to Ivan Mestrovic on Wednesday 24 June. It is organised in cooperation with the Mestrovic Museums in Croatia and three of their curators will give a paper. The speakers will include curators from the V&A, and specialists for sculpture and architecture from the UK and abroad.

It will be a fairly intimate event, with a roundtable format, and we hope interesting ideas will be exchanged. It is free of charge, but places are very limited, and an early registration is essential. To register please contact creativeCroatia at [email protected].

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International Trust for Croatian Monuments

Tuesday 9 June, 7.30pm
Holy Trinity Church
Sloane Square
London SW1

Read the full details here.

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New York Times review of Tena Štivičić's 'Three Winters'

Read the full review here.

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A Night at the Opera

AMAC-UK 2015 concert 'A Night at the Opera' to be held on February 28.
This will raise funds to support awards for Croatian young scientists.

You can view more information here.

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Croatian Embassy Fund Raising Concert

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Vlado Kristl at Tate Modern in November

An influential figure in Croatian avant-garde, Vlado Kristl’s work from his ground breaking animations produced at the Zagreb Film animation studio to his first live action film General I resni Clovek / The General, that was banned in 1962, will be shown alongside works by his contemporaries from the active Cine-Club movement in Croatia including Ante Verzotti, Milan Šamec, Mihovil Pansini, Tomislav Gotovac, Vladimir Petek and Ivan Martinac.

Kristl began filmmaking after his involvement in the abstract art movement EXAT 51, starting at the famous Zagreb Film studio he produced early films such as Krada dragulja / Great Jewel Robbery 1959 and his iconoclastic Cervantes adaptation Don Kihot 1961, a remarkable animation that radically reduced the source material recasting the Don Quixote and Sancho Panza against an abstract barren landscapes and fighting a rampant military.

His first live-action film General I resni Clovek / The General, an absurd drama set in a prison camp see Kristl as the lead inspiring an insurrection. The general of the title, whose appearance is heralded with laugher, bares an uncanny resemblance to President Tito that lead to the instant banning and destruction of the film – but not before a copy was smuggled out of Yugoslavia quickly followed by Kristl’s own departure.

Illustrated talks will explore the legacy of Vlado Kristl, EXAT 51 and the Croatia Cine-Clubs with film historian and persident of the Croatian Film Club Association Hrvoje Turkovic followed by a discussion with curator and researcher Branka Benčić.

3 Winters

Tena Štivičić's play 3 Winters is at the National Theatre from November 26

From the remnants of monarchy to Communism, democracy, war and the EU: Croatia 1945-2011. The Kos family argue, adapt, fall in and out of love.

World after world is erected and torn down around them. The one constant is the ivy-clad house in Zagreb, built by aristocrats, partitioned, owned by all, owned by a few; witness to four increasingly educated and independent generations of women.

But when the family assemble for Lucia's wedding, Alisa learns that her nouveau-riche brother-in-law has bought the once nationalised house. For the bride this is progress, for her sister it's a shady act of greed. For their principled parents, finally, it's one battle too many.

Against a country in turmoil, Tena Štivičić's 3 Winters creates the portrait of an eclectic family, held together by the courage to survive.

Hrvatska dopunska škola

The Croatian Supplementary School has been taking part in a research project with Goldsmiths, University of London, entitled ‘Critical Connections: Multilingual Digital Storytelling Project’, involving 5 supplementary schools, 5 mainstream schools and 3 overseas schools. This two year project (2012-2014), funded by the Paul Hamlyn Foundation, involves pupils in creating and evaluating digital stories, developing skills in language and literacy as well as more critical and sophisticated use of multimedia tools. It is innovative and exciting work which supports schools in engaging learners and in developing a curriculum which is attuned to the needs of culturally diverse societies and a more interconnected and interdependent world.The Film Festival at Goldsmiths to celebrates and discusses pupils’ work. The school students have created digital stories in a range of languages (Arabic, Chinese, Croatian, English, English as a second language, French, German and Greek).

Floods in Serbia, Bosnia Herzegovina and Croatia: appeals for help

Croatian Church

The Croatian Chaplaincy is organizing a collection of financial assistance for those affected by the devastating floods. During this week you can send donations to the Chaplaincy’s account:
The Croatian Church, Sort Code 50-21-01, Account Number 57228701.
Please advise them of your donation by e-mail [email protected] so that they can forward them next week to the Caritas of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Should you wish to send your donations directly you can do that to the following accounts: Caritas in Croatia, account IBAN HR05 2340 0091 1000 8034 0, reference number 175
Caritas in Bosnia and Herzegovina account IBAN BA39 338 690 481 206 3318, SWIFT CODE: UNCRBA 22.
They will also be collecting donations during the Sunday Mass on the 25th May 2014 at 4 pm in the Sacred Heart Church, 110 Horseferry Road, London SW1P 2EF for the flood affected communities in Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Serbia.

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Red Cross

Thousands of people are left homeless, without food, water, and warm and dry clothes due to severe flooding in Croatia, Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina. They need your help! Donate to the Red Cross organisations which are leading the humanitarian efforts in the region:
Croatian Red Cross:
IBAN: HR 6923400091511555516
SWIFT: PBZGHR2X
FULL BENEFICIARY NAME : HRVATSKI CRVENI KRIŽ,
FULL BENEFICIARY ADDRESS: ULICA CRVENOG KRIŽA 14, P.P. 93, 10001 ZAGREB
You can also make an online payment via credit card for “Pomoć za poplavljena područja u Hrvatskoj/Srbiji/Bosni i Hercegovini“ here. Red Cross Serbia:
Instructions for payments in EUR, GBP, USD are here (select English in upper right corner).
Red Cross Bosnia and Herzegovina:
IBAN CODE: BA391610000000850119
SWIFT CODE : RZBABA2S
FULL BENEFICIARY NAME : CRVENI KRIZ FEDERACIJE BIH SARAJEVO
FULL BENEFICIARY ADDRESS: NEDIMA FILIPOVICA 9, SARAJEVO
More information and news are here (google translator is available in right sidebar under ‘Izaberite jezik’).

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The Seagull

The ZKM theatre company from Zagreb will be performing Chekhov's The Seagull in Croatian with English surtitles on Saturday, May 24 at the Nottingham Playhouse. For details and how you can buy tickets (£13 or £11 concessions), please go to Notingham Playhouse

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Invitation

Vera Stevens, the winner of the Welcome Croatia Festival photographic competition "Croatia through the lens", will now have her own exhibition at the Croatian Embassy and you are invited. If you wish to attend the opening at 18:00 on April 17, please email [email protected] by April 14.

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OURFC V Croatia

Croatia Poster

Lea And Daria | UK Jewish Film Festival

If you missed the film "Lea and Daria" at the Croatian Film Festival, you will be able to see it at the Jewish Film Festival, from 3rd to 9th February at "JW3", 341-351 Finchley Road, London NW3 6ET.

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Croatian Language School for Children

The Croatian language school for children aged 5 to 14 will re-open in January 2014. The school is situated at the Croatian Embassy in London, 21 Conway Street, W1T 6BN. The lesson are held there on Saturdays and groups and timings will be confirmed at a later date, and will depend on the number of children enrolled. For more information please visit
www.cro-school.org.uk, or contact Ivana Capps on 07949 772314 or email [email protected]

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Dubrovnik Foreign Circle Appeal

Over £3,000 has been raised by the British-Croatian Society in response to our appeal for donations to support the Dubrovnik Foreign Circle's proposal to provide the Dubrovnik Hospital children's unit with a spirometer.

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A Visit to Fort George, Vis September 2013

This September my husband and I went first to Vis where we had been invited for the ceremony of the reopening of Fort George. William Wenkel, the young London-based businessman and Swedish naval reserve officer, who has invested heavily in the restoration of the fort and has a 25 year concession to run it as a cultural and recreational centre, asked Malcolm to advise on the contents and layout of a museum. Housed in the fort itself the museum is to cover the three main periods of the military history of Vis; the occupation and fortification by the British at the beginning of the nineteenth century; its use as an Austrian naval base; and by the allies and partisans in the Second World War. Besides the museum the fort will have a gallery for various local or international artists in residence to exhibit their work. There will also be concerts, facilities for meetings, conferences and receptions, with a restaurant, wine cellar and terrace bar and discotheque.

Almost five years had passed since our last visit to the fort, then in a sad state of neglect and disrepair and overgrown. So, when soon after our arrival on Vis, William and his team took us to the fort to show what progress had been made, we were more than pleasantly surprised. Under the guidance of the Split conservationist Sanja Buble, and in spite of the many bureaucratic hurdles to be surmounted, the inevitable delays and complications with the excavations and reconstruction, and escalating costs, much has been achieved. But the work is far from finished and more costly work remains to be undertaken. What has been done so far is a very considerable achievement, realising the fort's potential as one of the most splendid venues for entertainment and cultural activity in this part of the Adriatic. The mayor of Vis, Ivo Radica, has been supportive from the start when he interested William in the fort as a place to host parties for the yacht weeks, the primary business of William and his partners, the profits of which are being invested in the restoration. The Vis municipality has made an essential contribution by asphalting the road to the fort and laying a pipeline to supply water.

On the evening of September 6, 200 years since the British built the original fort in 1812-13, with fanfares and the beating of drums by a Croatian naval band, Admiral John McAnally, president of the Royal Navy Association, formally ordered the gate of the fort to be opened. Instead of a salute by cannon, there followed the explosion of fireworks on the roof of the fort.

The carefully choreographed and symbolic opening ceremony was witnessed by an international gathering of guests, including the mayor and local dignitaries, Croatian Navy officers representing the President of the Republic, Ivo Josipovic. and the British Ambassador to Croatia and British military attaches. Mingling with these official quests were retired Swedish naval officers and numerous other Swedish friends and family members of William Wenkel and his business partners, British with homes on Vis, and a number of representatives of Austria in nineteenth century uniforms, including one magnificent individual in an admiral's uniform with sideburns to match (reminding one of Gilbert and Sullivan). When the guests were assembled on the roof terrace, Admiral McAnally delivered a speech, after which the Union flag was lowered and replaced by the flag of Croatia by Croatian Navy officers. The Admiral then presented the key of the fort to the Commodore Robert Hranj, commanding the Croatian Navy, who then gave a speech and handed it on to the Mayor of Vis, Ivo Radica, who in turn entrusted it to William Wenkel.

After that the sit down dinner was hosted on the top terrace with all night partying for younger members until early hours of the morning.

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Sir Arthur Evans in Dalmatia

The Welcome Croatia Sir Arthur Evans seminar at the Ashmolean in Oxford last week was a great success. For those who were unable to attend, you might like to see the text of the introductory session from the Director of the museum, Dr Christopher Brown. It is attached to this email.

Sir Arthur Evans is today mostly remembered for his archaeological work on the island of Crete, and especially his excavations at the so-called ‘Palace of Minos’ at Knossos. But before Knossos, there were many other regions and time periods that attracted his interest.

Influenced by his father’s diverse antiquarian interests – the famous prehistorian Sir John Evans – young Arthur travelled extensively across Europe, while still an Oxford History undergraduate. His first visit to Croatia was in the late summer 1871 with his brother Lewis as part of a larger trip that included Austria.

Evans returned to Croatia in 1875, again joined by his brother Lewis. That was the beginning of a journey through Bosnia and Herzegovina which he later published as a book to gain an enthusiastic response by the press and critics of the time. The book was widely read and even quoted in Parliament – Evans became an authority in the region ‘after a month’s travel and a single book’.

While in Croatia, Evans visited Zagreb, Sisak, and Ragusa (modern Dubrovnik). He was interested in everyday life as his writings and drawings suggest. For the archaeology of the region, especially in Dalmatia, and Evans’s efforts to bring it to light and make it accessible to the wider world, you will hear more later this afternoon by our distinguished speakers, Professor John Wilkes, Dr Susan Sherratt, Dr Susan Walker and Dr Helena Tomas.

The most celebrated period of Evans in Croatia was by far the years between 1878 and 1882, when he worked as correspondent for the Manchester Guardian. In 1878 he married Margaret Freeman and together they made Ragusa their home, where Arthur had taken a 20-year lease on a beautiful house overlooking the sea, called Casa San Lazzaro.

Evans came to dislike Austrian rule as much as the Ottoman. He would write: ‘The people were treated not as a liberated, but as a conquered and inferior race; their sense of right – which they do possess in a remarkable degree – is simply trodden underfoot.’ His anti-Austrian reports and activities led to his imprisonment and eventual expulsion from the area.

In 1932, at the age of 81 and after an absence of fifty years, Evans revisited Croatia with his sister-in-law Helen Freeman. He flew to Zagreb from where he wrote: ‘the traveller arriving by air, looks down on what is now a city of over a quarter of a million inhabitants, spaciously ‘town-planned’, with a bright garden band stretching to its centre, and interspersed with fine public buildings…’. Evans’s journey ended with a visit to Ragusa where he was welcomed as a hero. There he saw his old house, garden, and the prison where he was incarcerated in 1882. Such was Evans’s love for Ragusa that his half-sister and biographer, Dame Joan Evans would write that ‘for many years he had felt that he would best find rest in the flowery graveyard, barred by the shadows of Cypresses, that lies outside the walls of the city’. Although his attention progressively shifted to Crete, Evans never abandoned his interest in Dalmatia and the region as a whole.

The influence of Sir Arthur Evans extends far and beyond the realm of Minos and the island of Crete and even that of archaeology. His liberal views on the political situation in southeastern Europe and his knowledge on the people, the land and the different cultures made him an expert of the complex history of that part of the world.

The Ashmolean’s half-day symposium on ‘Sir Arthur Evans in Dalmatia’ presents us with a great opportunity to explore his travels in the region and to look at contemporary Croatian archaeology in celebration of Croatia’s accession to the European Union on the 1st of July.

It gives me particular pleasure to welcome the Croatian Ambassador Dr Ivan Grdešić (and Mrs Grdešić) to the Ashmolean on this special occasion. Finally, I should like to thank Dr Yannis Galanakis and ‘Welcome Croatia’ for organising today’s symposium, and Archaeopress for their financial support of the event.

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Shearsman Books to publish Tin Ujević's poems translated by Richard Berengarten

Shearsman Books are about to publish bilingual edition of small selection of Tin Ujević's poems translated by Richard Berengarten and Daša Marić. Tin's poems have hardly been translated into English, and this is the first real attempt to do so seriously, even though on a small scale. Richard's translations have been published on several Croatian websites, most significantly in the cultural and academic web-journal "[sic]", a venture of the University of Zadar. There is also an extended critical and interpretative essay on Tin on the same website, which is quite possibly the first serious attempts by a British literary scholar to approach his work.

These translations have been widely circulated informally and on the web. For example, an enterprising English teacher in Croatia has been using some of these poems to help her pupils learn English. As the charming performances by these children suggest, Richard's translations retain the melos of Tin's poems.

YouTube clip 1

YouTube clip 2

YouTube clip 3

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Evening Standard review of West End hit musical 'Once', Wednesday 10 April 2013

Read about Croatian actress Zrinka Cvitesic at the heart of the new West End hit musical 'Once' Evening Standard

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Croatian Stand at the London Book Fair 2013

Read about Croatian Stand at the London Book Fair Croatian Stand

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Mapping Croatia

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An initiative to be supported

I would like to inform the members of the British Croatian society about an important project worthy of our interest and support. It regards the future development and the preservation of the beautiful and unique island of Vis It is particularly interesting for the British Croatian Society because the island’s place in two crucial periods in the British history. It served for a short time as a British base in the Napoleonic wars, from which time there are still the remains of several British fortifications, in need of restoration. Furthermore the island served as a secure base for the Allied air forces during the last years of WW2. Until a year ago, while they were still capable of undertaking it, British veterans from that war (some of whose lives were saved once they reached Vis) made an annual visit to the island to commemorate this episode and honour their comrades. However, Vis has a much older history, in relation to which a local volunteer cultural association ‘Lavurat za poja’ (‘To labour for the fields’) successfully organised an international symposium called “ Anatomy of an Island”, supported by the municipalities Vis and Komiza, at the end of September 2012.

The purpose of the symposium was to revaluate the local historic and environmental legacy and develop ideas and proposals for the intelligent preservation and use of existing historical attractions, to create and give a valuable cultural content to the island’s tourist industry, and to prevent undesirable and uncontrolled overdevelopment. For the introductory symposium the organisers gathered an impressive group of specialist lecturers in the fields of archaeology, architecture, economics and history who analysed different aspects of the island from their particular points of view. The symposium, apart from local inhabitants, was attended by 200 participants amongst them 32 students of architecture from Japan, Croatia and Slovenia. The lecturers worked for the second part of symposium with the students divided into 6 groups to develop ideas arising from the lectures during the first week.

Among the specialists was one of the most famous Japanese architects, Prof. Kengo Kuma, who has two architectural studios in France and a chair at Tokyo University. He talked about his work in small and delicate environments. He was followed by Prof. Radovic, also teaching architecture in Japan, who talked about world trends in sustaining small environments. Apart from them one of the best known architects and selector for Venice Biennale 2010 Arch. Kazuyo Selima joined the symposium during its seminar week where she worked with the students.

Archeologists Boris Chargo, Lorenzzo Guzzardi from Siracusa in Sicily, Mirosalv Katic, Dinko Radic and other well-known archaeologists saw possibilities in enhancing the idea of the antique Greek colony of Issa, the oldest urban development in Dalmatia dating from 2400 BC. Ancient Issa, the outlines of which are still visible, was created when Greeks from Syracuse in Sicily decided to establish colonies along the Adriatic sea routes to facilitate trade with the Northern Adriatic . The Greek colonisation began with the development of the town and port of ancient Issa, which subsequently served as a starting point for further settlements such as Trogir and Stobrec. Issa was founded approximately at the same time as the Aegean Greeks founded Pharos. The archaeologists talked about antique Issa’s significance, explaining its layout and purpose, and how to read what is left of it. In the open debate that followed, all the participants in the symposium were invited to discuss how the site could be better preserved and made more interesting as a tourist attraction. Today the site of ancient Issa, near the central part of the town and port of Vis, is still not completely excavated, and what has been is rather neglected , certainly not well enough presented to attract much attention, except from dedicated archaeologists.

However the Greek site and its preservation was only one of the themes of the symposium. Other lecturers offered various insights on the island’s history, economy and architecture. The British historian, Malcolm Scott Hardy, author of the book “The British and Vis”, talked about some recent research placing the island in the context of political and military developments involving the British, Austrians and Russians exactly two hundred years before in 1812..

Considering that many of the islands along the Adriatic Croatian coast have been neglected (for example there are no boat connections between Komiza and the mainland), the Vis project should be of importance for the Croatian economy, because it stresses the need for control of future developments and their integration within the ecological, environmental and cultural preservation of the Dalmatian islands.

Realising the importance of the project, the ministries of culture and tourism have given support, making it possible to extend it for the next four years and for it to serve as a model to be followed by other islands.

A resident of Vis, the architect Bosko Budisavljevic, who was in charge of this exceptionally well-organised symposium and seminar, deserves much praise for this project, together with his many voluntary collaborators. The active participation of the present mayor of Vis, who hosted several excellent evenings and attended the various presentation, was particularly welcome.

More about this symposium with details of all the participants can be found on the web page:

Anatomija Otoka

Vesna Domany Hardy

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statement-of-intent

Dear Sir/Madam,

I am a Croatian laywer living in the UK. As I have recently witnessed many questions from Croatians living in th UK regarding their/our legal immigration status, once Croatia joins the EU (especially during the recent speech Mrs Pusic gave at the EBRD), I hereby wish to share with all my fellow Croatians a new document published last week at the UK Border Agency website.

The UK government has introduced to the Parliament the European Union (Croatian Accession) Bill on 18 October 2012. Accordingly, the Home Office has published a Statement of Intent setting out the transitional restrictions which it expects to apply to Croatian nationals working in the UK after 1 July 2013.

Please find attached the Statement of Intent. This document is not definitive, but it gives a useful indication of what to expect in terms of rights and obligations.

Many thanks.

Kind regards,

Lana Rukavina

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Chris Cviic Memorial Lecture

Vesna Pusić, Croatia's Foreign and European Affairs Minister, gave the annual Chris Cviić memorial lecture on 17 October organised by the British-Croatian Society with the European Bank of Reconstruction and Development. Her subject was Croatia in the EU.

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Letter from the President

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BLOOM Igra

Projekt je odlicno prihvacen od javnosti! Ljudi ga jako vole, pogotovo djeca i vec je jako popularan. I bez ikakvih uputa javnost intuitivno pristupa projektu i iako je BLOOM komponenta jednostavna i samo jednog tipa, svi s lakocom uspjevaju sloziti vrlo unikatne strukture. Ljudi vrlo brzo postaju ovisni o BLOOM igri - slicno originalnim LEGO blokovima koji su jako univerzalni i generalni - ali bas zato pruzaju mogucnost neiscrpnog broja kombinacija i "igraliste" su za vasu mastu! Imaginacije je jedino ogranicenje... S obzirom na velicinu komponenti (40 cm) Bloom strukture brzo rastu!

Dva velika paviljona koja smo mi u pocetku konstruirali (oba u labirint konfiguracijama kroz koje ljudi a pogotovo djeca mogu prolaziti) su vrlo brzo dozivjeli potpune transformacije od strane posjetitelja. Na neki nacin su nase pocetne strukture ohrabrile posjetitelje da se sami vrlo revno angaziraju. BLOOM je dizajniran na nacin suprotan minimalnim optimalnim strukturama koje se moraju sastavljati po strogim pravilima. jako puno poveznih tocki u strukturi (redundancija) omogucava visoku toleranciju strukture i puno mogucnosti za improvizaciju koja je sastavni dio BLOOM igre. Strukture genrativno rastu kroz interaktivnu igru...

Ja ovakav tip konstrukcija obicno koristim u svojoj metodologiji sa studentima na universitetu kad tek pocnu raditi na logickim strukturama (algorithmima) koje su moja specijalnost. Na taj nacin studenti dobiju vrlo intuitivan osjecaj za kod i matematicke strukture koje se naknadno razviju u generativne kompjuterske metode za dizajn. Trafalgar Square ce biti najznacajnija lokacija i ona ce se otvoriti 28.8.

DAZ blog

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Croatian Cyclists in London for Olympics

A 17 member team of Croatian cyclists arrived in London for the Olympics after a 32 day cycle from Zagreb. They were welcomed by Lord Bates and taken to see the Houses of Parliament before cycling off to Stratford to complete their journey.

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Welcome Croatia

Preparations are under way for a major Croatian festival, Welcome Croatia, to take place in the UK from January to June, 2013. The programme is expected to include:The launch of a photography competition Croatia through the eyes of a visitorin February 2012. This will run over 12 months leading to an exhibition of theshort-listed prize winners in February 2013.

• Croatia, Sporting Powerhouse will be shown just before the Olympics with a top sports personality to open it and then tour around the UK during the festival
• a map listing all the Croatian cultural objects in the UK and how to find them
• working with major museums there will be a programme to display significant Croatian pieces in museum collections during the festival with accompanying talks
• a Croatian film festival
• an academic seminar on the early history of Croatia
• publishing a Croatian cookery book with associated food and wine events
• a project with school children in the two countries working together to explore their differences and similarities
• music events from classical to contemporary
• a Croatian literary programme

The festival committee, chaired by Sir John Ramsden, consists of the British-Croatian Society, the Croatian Students and Young Professionals Network, the Embassy of the Republic of Croatia, the Oxford Association of Croatian Graduates, the International Trust for Croatian Monuments, the Croatian National Tourist Office and the British Croatian Chamber of Commerce.

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Our Chair, Flora Turner, represented the British-Croatian Society at an event on February 1 to honour Dr Kathy Wilkes. Vivian Grisogono has sent this report. You can also watch the event by going to the link given at the bottom of this page.

Dr Kathy Wilkes honoured in Dubrovnik

Dr Kathleen Vaughan Wilkes (1946-2003) was an Oxford philosopher, lecturer at St. Hilda's, who achieved a special kind of eminence. Her formidable intellect was matched with indomitable courage whenever she was faced with physical danger and adversity. Details of her adventurous life and academic career were celebrated in the St. Hilda's Chronicle following her death.

Having become a Fellow of St. Hilda's in 1972 at the age of 26, she volunteered six years later to visit Prague, then behind the Iron Curtain, to give philosophy seminars, which were considered a dissident activity. She returned to then-Czechoslovakia several times, even after she had been refused a visa, and was tireless in helping Czech academics and students right up to the fall of the Iron Curtain in the 'Velvet Revolution' of 1989.

Kathy also spent time teaching in the then-Soviet Union, Poland, Bulgaria, Brazil and China, but it was in former Yugoslavia that her courage and resources were put to the greatest test. She had become Chairman of the Executive Committee of Dubrovnik's Inter-University Centre in 1986, and spent time teaching there every year, as well as co-editing with William Newton-Smith an academic journal first entitled 'Dubrovnik Papers' and later `International Studies in the Philosophy of Science'. Kathy was in Dubrovnik in 1991 when the Serb-led Yugoslav National Army suddenly attacked the city with ruthless, sickening aggression.

For the 1996 -1997 edition of the St. Hilda's chronicle, Kathy wrote a moving article about what life in Dubrovnik was like under siege from September 1991 to January 1992. Her personal account evoked the full horror of the relentless attacks from air, sea and land against one of the most beautiful historical holiday resorts in the world. No journalist's report ever matched her descriptions in bringing home the full extent of the tragedy. On October 3rd 1991, Kathy spoke with calm determination to the BBC World Service for their Topical Reports: 'There's no water. There's no electricity. This is the only phone in Dubrovnik. There's fire all around. I think nobody including the Croatian President knows the extent of the damage here. The houses are on fire. About a quarter of Dubrovnik and the suburbs have been destroyed.' That was two months before the specially brutal aggression on December 6th 1991, the feast of St. Nicholas which marks the start of Catholic Christmas celebrations.

Kathy stayed in the city, helping the local people in every way possible, and sharing the misery and deprivations of the experience. She left only to collect aid to bring back to the city, travelling under very difficult circumstances. Besides being brilliant academically, she was very practical: she brought back medical supplies and even an ambulance while the siege was still on, and later on mine detectors when the area around Dubrovnik could be cleared. She seemed specially attuned to practical needs: in her article for the St. Hilda's Chronicle, written after the end of the aggression, she highlighted the disaster of Vukovar, a city which was suffering much worse than Dubrovnik, but without the international sympathy focused on the latter. She also pointed out that refugees were still crammed into Dubrovnik's surviving hotels, and the outlying villages were totally devastated.

Kathy received several honours for her courage, tenacity, vision and help, including one of Croatia's highest awards (Red Danice hrvatske), but the one she prized most was the honorary citizenship of Dubrovnik, which was granted in 1993. After her death, Kathy's ashes were scattered in the sea under the Lovrijenac fortress. In 2011 the city officials decided to mark their continuing appreciation of her unique contribution with a commemorative plaque on an historic square near the fortress, renaming the square after her. The formal unveiling ceremony was held on February 1st 2012 during the celebrations for the feast of Saint Blaise, Dubrovnik's patron saint. It was attended by a select group of people, including children too young to have known the war, alongside some of Kathy's old friends such as Mr Pero Poljanic, Dubrovnik's Mayor at the time of the siege; Mrs Berta Dragicevic, long-serving secretary of the Inter-University Centre; and Mrs Tea Batinic, owner of the Artur art gallery, in whose house Kathy stayed during the war. Four prominent people spoke movingly of her achievements from different standpoints: the present Mayor of Dubrovnik Mr Andro Vlahusic, the Town Council President Mrs Olga Muratti, Inter-University Centre Director Prof.dr.Krunoslav Pisk, and Mrs Flora Turner, Kathy's successor as Chairman of the British-Croatian Society.

Vivian Grisogono

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MNMH_NOcroM&feature=related

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One of our members has sent the following information about the recent Klapa Motovun concert in London:

The Klapa Motovun concert at St Martin in-the-Fields, Trafalgar Square, January 17, 2012 was a resounding success, ending with a standing ovation. For those of you who couldn't attend, here are three clips. For those of you who did, a reminder of the wonderful music. Enjoy and feel free to pass on the links.

The 2011 annual dinner of the British-Croatian Society featuring the City of Dubrovnik was held in the prestigious surroundings of the Oxford and Cambridge Club on Pall Mall, London on Saturday December 3. The dinner, attended by over 100 people including the Deputy Mayor of Dubrovnik Mr Niko Salja and his wife, was supported by the City of Dubrovnik. Dr Robin Harris, author of Dubrovnik: A History, gave a talk entitled The Historic Achievement of Dubrovnik (now printed in the second of the new series of booklets issued by the Society). A raffle at the dinner raised 640 GBP for this year's British-Croatian Society charity Napredak from Dubrovnik (www.hkdnapredak.com). The following is a translation from an article that appeared in the Dubrovacki Vjesnik newspaper on December 12, 2011:

The twentieth anniversary of the ruthless destruction of Dubrovnik is still remembered in London. The British-Croatian Society, supported by the City of Dubrovnik Tourist Board and many members and donors, held their traditional annual dinner this year dedicated to the memory of the victims of the war.The evening was organised in the classical ambience of the Oxford and Cambridge Club, preceded by an exhibition of documents from the history of Dubrovnik in the exhibition hall of our embassy. This was a logical prelude to dinner, where the main speaker was historian Robin Harris, the well-known author of books about Dubrovnik's past and present. At the main table were Deputy Mayor of Dubrovnik Niko Salja, who came with his wife, and hosts Branko Sorkocevic Sorge and the President of the British-Croatian Society, Mrs Flora Turner. Miso Mihocevic was a special guest of honour.The hall, which was filled to capacity, included Ivica Tomic, Ambassador of the Republic of Croatia in the UK, with his guests, Mr Andrew Kojakovic and his daughters, Lady Jadranka Beresford-Peirse and her family, the Frankopan family and many prominent Croats and their British friends.Also at the dinner was the Maestro Oliver Gilmour, recently a resident of Dubrovnik. This provided the opportunity for the Deputy Mayor to announce a new addition to the overall cultural offer of the City - a project entitled the Dubrovnik Summer Opera which will begin in June with the staging of Mozart's opera Cosi fan tutte on Lokrum.A pleasant dinner at the elegant club finished with a raffle to raise funds for a charity supported by the British-Croatian Society.

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