MENT

Founder, Laura Kriefman was invited to represent Keychange.eu at MENT, in Ljubljana. 

MENT is one of the most interesting showcase festivals – programming a really fascinating range of music acts from across genres and Europe. 

The festival takes place across the city in a range of venues, from convert venues, castles, and old factories. Laura saw some stand-out performances including: Slumberland who mix of instruments made from other objects was right up her street. 

Laura was chairing the panel: Women in the Music/Festival Industry in the Ex-Yugoslav Region

 The panel was a huge success with a full house and detailed conversations from 4 leading lights in the music industry in this region: 

Nina Dragičević (City of Women/Musica Femina, Topographies of Sound, SI)
Nina is a composer, sound artist, writer, the artistic director of Topographies of Sound Symposium Festival (ŠKUC, Ljubljana) and a program collaborator of the Association for the Promotion of Women in Culture – City of Women (Ljubljana) within the framework of the European project Musica Femina (2018–2020). In 2018, she received the Knight of Poetry Award in both the Jury Selection and People’s Choice categories, as well as the Recognition Award for Outstanding Scholarly Achievements by the University of Ljubljana. In the same year, she was a finalist of the European Broadcasting Union Palma Ars Acustica Awards for her sound piece Parallellax.

Katerina Cvetkovska (Password Production, Taksirat, MK)
Katerina is a philosophy graduate and as such, the only job she could get was messing around with everything she’s not supposed to mess with. So she started from what she likes the most: music, writing, dancing, New Year’s greeting cards. For nearly a decade now, she imagines that’s what she does at Password Production, working on PR, event/digital marketing and copywriting. Like many comics characters, she doesn’t possess any superhuman powers; she makes use of intellect, detective skills, technology and physical prowess. Her favourite type of music event: conferences (!?). Weakness: lacking in musical talent. Alter ego: musician.

Maja Starčević (EXIT Festival, RS)
Maja was the best in her class as a nuclear physician, but had the good fortune to be able to turn her pastime and love of music into her primary occupation. In the beginning, she was involved in discovering new talents, then over time became the Main Stage Booker for EXIT Festival, which has been crowned the Best Major European Festival several times. For many years now, Maja has also been active in organizing numerous other eminent festivals all over the Balkans: R:evol:ution Festival (Romania), Dev9t (Serbia), Festival 84 (Bosnia and Herzegovina), Sea Star (Croatia) and Sea Dance (Montenegro).

Adriana Šnajder (fakat., HR)
Adriana has been actively “in the business” since 2008. She has worked in various production and execution sectors (stage, backstage, tech, organisation …) of various music (and non-music) live events and festivals in Croatia (Terraneo, InMusic, Fresh Island, Super Uho, Outlook, Dimensions, Zagreb Calling …). Currently, she’s an Executive Producer/Event Manager at fakat. – a Croatian agency for everything in connection with live events and production. She’s an adrenaline-driven multi-tool with a Super Sack who enjoys the chaos of live events. They have a wild, unpredictable dynamic, full of various possible outcomes that all lead to one singular goal – a perfect finale.