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Lithuanian Days in Scotland, a unique series of events showcasing Lithuania, will be held in Edinburgh and Glasgow 22-25 October 2019. Over four days, local Scots and the Lithuanian community in Scotland will be invited, together with leading Lithuanian figures from the worlds of culture and academia like prof. Tomas Venclova, Petras Geniušas and Liudas Mockūnas, as well as young people and their Scottish collaborators working in the creative industries, to delve into the search for  historical, cultural, and socials connections between these two North European nations.

‘Working in the United Kingdom, we would like information about Lithuania to be disseminated not only in London and for this reason we have decided this year to organize Lithuanian Days in Scotland, a country which attracts people from all over the world because of the beauty of its nature and its unique identity,’ notes Renatas Norkus, the Lithuanian ambassador to the United Kingdom. ‘Through our events we aim to spread a multi-faceted narrative about Lithuania and thereby encourage a bilateral cultural, academic and social dialogue with Scotland and build new partnerships for the future. I hope that the programme of events in Edinburgh and Glasgow will also be of interest to the large Scottish Lithuanian community whose history dates back to the 19th century.

Lithuanian Days in Scotland will begin on 22 October with a concert in Edinburgh at St Cecilia’s Hall, which besides its concert hall also houses a museum housing one of the world’s most important collections of historic musical instruments. The concert will feature two of Lithuania’s leading lights in music, the saxophonist Liudas Mockūnas and the pianist Petras Geniušas, presenting The Sea in the Forest, a unique improvisation on the themes of the symphonic poems The Sea and In the Forest by one of Lithuania’s most celebrated composers and artists Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis (1875-1911).

On 23 October a roundtable discussion From the Past to the Future: Scotland, Lithuania and Europe will take place with prof. Tomas Venclova, one of Lithuania’s most eminent intellectuals, a poet, essayist and literary critic, together with prof. Robert I. Frost, Burnett Fletcher Chair of History at the University of Aberdeen, an acclaimed expert on the history of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. The discussion, moderated by Rytis Martikonis, a former Lithuanian ambassador to the European Union, will reflect on Lithuania’s and Scotland’s historical links and inspirations in addressing questions of importance to the whole of Europe.

One of the participants at the Lithuanian Days in Scotland will be the contemporary storyteller Daiva Ivanauskaitė. The Scottish international storytelling festival Beyond Words invites those attending the event to delve into her story Garden of Tales: Stories from Lithuania. The festival events in Edinburgh and Glasgow will also include screenings of Cinematic Inclusions: Documentary Traditions and Experiments in Lithuanian Cinema, highlighting 20th century Lithuanian poetic and experimental documentary filmmaking. Adomas Narkevičius, a curator at the Education and Arts Centre Rupert in Vilnius, will give a talk under the title Desire in Whispers, focusing on tensions in Lithuanian art in the 20th century, at the Collective gallery on Calton Hill.

Most of the events at Lithuanian Days in Scotland are free. You can find the programme here.

Lithuanian Days in Scotland is organized by the Lithuanian embassy together with the Lithuanian cultural attaché in the United Kingdom and the Lithuanian Culture Institute. The programme of events is supported by the Lithuanian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Go Vilnius, the official development agency of the City of Vilnius.

At present there are about 15,000 Lithuanians living in Scotland, the majority of whom arrived, as was the case in the rest of the UK, after 2004 when Lithuania became a member of the European Union.