The prestigious event was organised by the European Festival Awards in Groningen, Holland and Open’er, which has been running for 8 years, surprisingly beat the big guns like Glastonbury and Roskilde.
This is a massive achievement for the festival held annually in Gdynia, a relatively unheard of city in northern Poland.
The European Festival Awards are said to be the most important and most recognized of all the festival awards in Europe and represent the common initiative projects of Yourope (The European Festival Association), Eurosonic Noorderslag (most important European music conference) and Virtual Festivals Europe. The last of these represents the interactive website that describes and sums up all the rock festivals in Europe. One of the awards’ ceremony’s major goals is to add up every single important festival event from the previous season and it always concludes by honouring festivals that were particularly significant in terms of organization and/or performers.
Mikołaj Ziółkowski, president of Alter Art – the agency which organises Open’er, made no attempt to hide both his astonishment and delight after the result was announced. He emphasized that after this award not only would Open’er become better known, but also Poland as a place where rock fans can come with high expectations. He also added that, with the Heineken Open’er in only it’s 8th season, it was an incredible honour to receive such a big award for a festival which is considered quite young in comparison to the likes of Roskilde.
Apart from the honours for the festival itself, two bands that performed at Open’er 2009 were honoured as well. The first one was the legendary Prodigy(Best Headline Act), the band which so many people love and hate at the same time, while the second was British alternative rock trio, White Lies(Best Newcomer Artist).
For more information about things to do in Gdynia or any of our other polish destinations, please feel free to contact our main office.
