Creating opportunity and communicating tasks are key elements in supporting and building up active lives, also for people with intellectual disabilities. Time is approaching for a very special event to take place in Denmark. Sølund festival.
Three days in June with music, community and love
Sølund Music Festival is the world’s largest music festival for people with developmental disabilities and their companions. Under the vision of ‘music and love for all’, around 20,000 people gather for three days in June each year in The Village of Sølund in Skanderborg, which is a large institution having hundreds of people with Intellectual disabilities.
Sølund Music Festival first annonced their music and love festival in 1986. The year before, a handful of employees in The Village of Sølund got the idea for the festival. They were inspired by participating in a theoretical course on disability and sexuality.
One thing is theory, another is practice
“After the course, they sat and chewed ruminate over a lager beer,” says festival director Lasse Mortensen.
The practitioners were frustrated that they had a good theory, but how should they turn the theory into practice? How could a place be created where people with developmental disabilities could meet, have fun, have shared experiences, make friendships and experience love?
Music and love have always been the best vitamin injection for couples. So, of course, the answer in Skanderborg, Denmark’s festival city number one, was that people with developmental disabilities should have their very own festival.
The framework should be such that you could experience being human, music lover, girlfriend, friend and at the same time be minimally bothered by being disabled.
Not far from idea to action
Already that same year, the association Sølund Music Festival – together with the mascot Frits – was a reality. And Lasse Mortensen and a few board members have been with us ever since.
Year after year, the party succeeds due to an active and unpaid 12-member board, more than 2,000 volunteer assistants and a large number of incredibly generous sponsors and very helpful playmates.
When someone dares to think, plan and stage large events, they create the framework for hundreds of bigger and smaller tasks to be solved and handled. They create the opportunity and the space for many others to contribute, with whatever they would like to contribute with. As well, smaller and bigger institutions and groups are encouraged to participate.
Tasks to be planned – before, during and after the events.
To many, the tasks that needs to be solved at such large events – becomes central activities in the annual planning of many institutions and for many citizen groups. In principle, it is up to the imagination of the staff to find out what their civic society can deliver and contribute to when large events opens up the possibility.
And Lasse Mortensen and a few board members have been with us ever since. Year after year, the party succeeds due to an active and unpaid 12-member board, more than 2,000 volunteer assistants and a large number of incredibly generous sponsors and very helpful playmates. When someone dares to think, plan and stage large events, they create the framework for hundreds of bigger and smaller tasks to be solved and handled. They create the opportunity and the space for many others to contribute, with whatever they would like to contribute with. As well, smaller and bigger institutions and groups are encouraged to participate.
Tasks to be planned – before, during and after the events.
To many, the tasks that needs to be solved at such large events – becomes central activities in the annual planning of many institutions and for many citizen groups.
In principle, it is up to the imagination of the staff to find out what their civic society can deliver and contribute to when large events opens up the possibility.
