Elina

For people coming to the festival from further away, we suggest two good options for accommodation in the centre of Tampere, within walking distance from the festival venues:

Holiday Inn Central Station offers a discount price of 90 eur/ room (for 1-3 persons) for Fest Afrika guests, including breakfast and sauna. Mention the code “Fest Africa vieraat” when you make the reservation. Reservations need to be made by Monday 26 June directly at the hotel: tampere.hicentralstation@restel.fi or tel.: 0200 48141 (0,17e/call + 0,81e/min + local charges).

Summer hotel Aurora offers accommodation in rooms of one, two or four. All rooms have in-suite bathrooms with a shower. More information and reservations: http://auroramajoitus.fi/ or booking.com

Fest Afrika’s African market takes over Tullikamarin aukio for two days this time! Everyone is welcome to shop and enjoy the African atmosphere at the (hopefully) sunny square on Friday, July 7th and Saturday, July 8th 2017 at 12–21. More info about the market here, reservations for selling spots by June 5th with this online form.

At the market will also take place Fest Africa’s traditional open stage event. If you want to perform at the market, sign up by email at the address info@festafrika.net and let us know what kind of a performance you would offer and on which day you would like to perform. Also wishes for specific times can be presented. However, you should notice that we will probably not have the kind of full PA at the market as we used to at Telakka in previous years, meaning that the place is best suited for performances that do not need PA or just simple amplification (e.g. background music) is sufficient.

Nothing would work well at Fest Afrika without volunteers… if you want to join the joyous team of volunteers, fill out this online form (in Finnish)! Volunteers are needed mostly for the ticket sales desk at concerts, but also to assist in other tasks both during the festival and beforehand.

Fest Afrika supports as this year’s good cause the project “Dream stories – a trip from Finland to Gambia” by Marjo Smolander, Sini Suomi and the association Apu-Paku ry. The idea of the project is to drive a small van to the village of Pakau Penku in the Gambia where it will stay to serve in public transportation. On the way, while driving through Europe and a few African countries, Marjo and Sini will collect dreams that the people they meet have in the form of photos, sounds and videos. We will get some tasters of them already during the coming festival, although the trip continues in the autumn.

Through the Mesenaatti page you can donate a small – or bigger – sum of money to support the project. On the Unelmatarinoita Facebook page and blog  you can find more information about the project and on the Apu-Paku Facebook page and website you can read about the village of Pakau Penku and the activities of Apu-Paku ry there. Most of the texts are in Finnish, unfortunately, but Apu-Paku’s website has also some info in English.