Three Indian dancers move to Indian music at the Carnival of Cultures in Berlin (archive image) Photo: ste/tm_pag
From BZ/dpa
After a three-year break, floats, artists and music groups are to parade through Kreuzberg again this year at the Carnival of Cultures.
According to the organizers, the places for the parade during the street festival at Pentecost are already fully booked. Groups and individual actors could only apply for the street festival program, it said. The route of the parade was shortened for cost reasons and the number of participants was reduced.
The Kreuzberg street festival needs answers to several challenges for the coming years. On the one hand, Blücherplatz, the traditional location of the carnival, will be closed from 2025 due to construction work. Added to this are the significantly increasing costs due to inflation.
The growing number of visitors to the festival and the problems associated with it have also not appealed to all residents in recent years.
Therefore, the organizers, together with citizens, have been looking for solutions and concepts for the future in a participatory process lasting several months. More than 1,000 people took part in the process, it said. At the beginning of the week, the organizers presented the final report.
Accordingly, most participants spoke out in favor of keeping the carnival at a central location in Kreuzberg. A reduction in the number of visitors was also not wanted by the majority. The carnival should also remain political.
The Carnival of Cultures has been around since 1996, and in the years leading up to the pandemic it regularly attracted hundreds of thousands of visitors.