03/07/2025
Dear Eveyone,
Thank you for your open, honest, and constructive feedback. As the organisers of the 8th Turkish Cypriot Festival, we want to express our appreciation for the time and care you have all taken in sharing your thoughts, not just on your own experience but also on behalf of many in the community. This kind of respectful dialogue will continue our growth and improvement.
The Two-Day Festival
Many have highlighted the clear difference between the two days of the festival. The two-day event was introduced to allow an additional day, the Saturday, which was coined as the 'Youth Fest' and aimed to encourage the younger generation of our community to engage with our culture. The platform showcased young talent and emerging artists from the community, such as Kazmaier, an up-and-coming Turkish Cypriot music writer and artist from Northern Cyprus; DJ Celil, a well-renowned Turkish Cypriot from Bizim FM radio ; and MC Epiphany, a Turkish Cypriot rap artist based in the UK. The current CTCA UK committee is committed to looking forward and supporting the prosperity of the next generation who celebrate the growing and evolving Turkish Cypriot Culture. Working together with the CTCA Youth team, we are pleased to have received a lot of enthusiasm regarding the dynamic performances and further requests for next year’s 'Youth Fest.' Guests who joined us on the Sunday would have enjoyed the more traditional festival experience, which we continue to honour with pride. It is accepted that going forward, we can better highlight the difference between the two days of the festival, to allow everyone to enjoy and celebrate the old and new of our culture and heritage.
Costs, Funds and Accessibility
We wish to make the festival accessible to all who want to share and celebrate our culture. We are also aware that for many budgeting is important. It was, therefore, our priority to ensure that despite the significantly rising costs in running a festival, the entrance fees remained the same as previous years, at £5 per day. Further, we were very pleased for the first time this year to be able to offer the early bird discount and the bundle packages to ensure that attendance was affordable.
CTCA UK is a non-profit organisation. In the last two years, 20% of all ticket sales generated by our associations and schools have been directly been donated to them. Turkish Cypriot schools that have been struggling due to the increased rental cost of premises have benefitted from additional donations. Other charitable causes, including the Turkey earthquake appeal in 2023, have also received donations in support.
Weather Conditions
Whilst many enjoyed the Cypriot like whether, the rising temperatures presented a challenge for some over the weekend. In accordance with official guidance from the local authority and health and safety officers, we had increased the shaded seating areas and had distributed free bottled water to the public throughout the day. We had further made amendments to the scheduled programme of entertainment across the two days to factor peak temperatures. We will continue to review and reflect to see how we might improve our response to challenging weather conditions should they repeat next year.
Initiatives and Activities
We are grateful for all the wonderful ideas and initiatives that were put forward for this year's festival and would like to acknowledge and thank all of the volunteers for their time and effort to make them a success. In particular, we were proud to introduce for the first time the 'Kibris Evi' where we were able to demonstrate with pride our freshly handmade pilavunas that were oven baked on site, and display traditional Turkish Cypriot preserves, bread sticks and other Cypriot foods. Our only regret is that we were unable to incorporate all of the great ideas and initiatives that were put forward due to various constraints including time and resource. We hope to be able to grow our team of volunteers for next year so we might be able to action more of these initiatives, such as a 'Tavla', competition, craft workshops, children's zones and theatre. If you are able to assist and would like to volunteer for next year please do contact us at [email protected].
Thank you again for attending and supporting the festival. We are committed to making this festival better together.
Warm regards,
CTCA UK Festival Team
