Scoop at this year’s Zinneke Parade: we invited eight organisations from outside Brussels and Belgium for an international Zinnode! Together with participants from Paris, Edinburgh, Prague, Roztoky, Rotterdam, Tilburg, Leuven and La Louvière, we formed the collective BRZ’NKO ŠTROÏ. A motley crew of soundmakers from the four corners of Europe.

Oi Musica, Velvet Carnival, Masopust Parade, ICAF Rotterdam, EELT Collectief, La Fabrique des Impossibles, MJ Indigo and De Batterij. Driven by Jo Zanders and Vital Schraenen, this international group of community arts organisations joins forces to form BRZ’NKO ŠTROÏ. Wearing colourful masks and dancing cheerfully, they combine drums, fuzzy gamelan instruments, trumpet blasts, all sorts of clashing objects and other schmilblixes… Lost and found in translation, they celebrate their unity, despite waves of corona, wars, Brexits and other crises.

This unique collective grew out of a dynamic around the societal value of parades and artistic interventions in the public space, which has been linking artists from different European metropolises for several years. It started in early 2019 during an exchange in Edinburgh between jazz musicians from Brussels and Oi Musica. This encounter and the participation of BRUiTAL (created for the Zinneke Parade of 2018) in the  Velvet Carnival triggered the artistic coordination of MetX: why not set up an international symposium alongside the 20th Zinneke Parade? Plans were drawn up, including with the organisers of ICAF, but all these events were eventually cancelled because of Corona. It was only a postponement…

We picked up the thread at the beginning of 2023: first of all, MetX was resident at ICAF Rotterdam in February. We ran workshops and presented projects such as Fanfakids (born out of the 1st Zinneke Parade), Sheikhs Shikhats & B’net Chaabi and BRUiTAL ft. DROM & New Moon during performances at the Theater Zuidplein and in the surrounding streets. Some of these projects and our general philosophy were also documented in the thematical publication Sound of Change.

MetX and Zinneke then brought their two international networks together at the Brussels2030 Summer Academy in June 2023. With the support of Park Poétik and Kunstenpunt, we invited key people from ICAF, Oi Musica and Velvet Carnival, as well as from La Fabrique des Impossibles (Paris), EELT (Tilburg) and Partôt Parata (Bologna) to an international exchange on community arts in the urban public space. At this meeting, the participants set up the International Parade Consortium, with the aim of organising an international Zinnode at the next Zinneke Parade.

Together with all these partners and artist Lisette Sivard, Jo and Vital then designed the artistic content. At the end of 2023, the first international Zinnode was born under the name BRZ’NKO ŠTROÏ. It took shape over the course of five exchanges: at Velvet Carnival (Prague) in November, at Masopust Parade (Roztoky) in February, at MINI ICAF (Rotterdam) in March, at Rêvons Rue (Paris) at the end of April and at the beginning of May, when some members of BRUiTAL travelled to Prague with the youth percussion group Mouv’2 Rue from La Louvière for a 10-day exchange programme with the organisers of Velvet Carnival as part of Erasmus+.

At the end of May, all the participants headed to Brussels to take part in the Zinneke Parade on Saturday 1 June in, on, between, under and above the streets of the city centre!

BRZ’NKO ŠTROÏ

MJ Indigo – Mouv’2 Rue (La Louvière)

De Batterij – DROM (Leuven)

Velvet Carnival (Prague)

Masopust Parade (Roztoky)

La Fabrique des Impossibles – Rêvons Rue (Paris)

Oi Musica (Edinburgh)

EELT Collectief (Tilburg)

ICAF (Rotterdam)

MetX (Brussels)