Buffer Fringe 2021

The Buffer Fringe Performing Arts Festival 2021 took place between the 8th and 10th of October 2021 across Cyprus, internationally and online. Buffer Fringe 2021 endeavoured to complement and expand the creative, artistic, and thinking processes that began in 2020, by giving the artists and audiences a chance to complete the cycle they had started through postponed works from 2020, on the same theme of Displacement. At the same time, the Festival supported new projects and exciting partnerships and collaborations.

Despite being one of the few artistic platforms in Cyprus and globally to have gone through with the Festival in 2020, the Covid-19 pandemic created a split in some of the Festival’s planned activity last year. On the other hand, it has allowed some of the works that had remained in progress to be further developed.

Organized by the Home for Cooperation, the Festival took place under the artistic direction of Ellada Evangelou, combined with a collaboration with Creative Directors, Nihal Soğancı and Maria Varnakkidou. The three constituted the creative and organizational core of the festival, with Diomedes Koufteros in Communications and Outreach, and Zoe Kakota as Technical Director complementing the team.

Sharing of the works-in-progress has once again been implemented, giving the opportunity to the artists to document their creative and artistic process through the Buffer Fringe Blog. Partnerships and collaborations with local and international partners including IMPACT, Mağusa Kale Pasajı, SPACE (Netherlands), and the Youth Board of Cyprus and others, have been broadened and extended.

At the same time, the festival team was working on creating the grounds through events, such as conferences and meet-ups, to unpack support mechanisms for festivals and to further elaborate on how Covid-19 affected artists, the arts and the cultural sector which is of particular importance to understand and re-create the future of the arts and festivals after the Covid-19 crisis.

Buffer Fringe 2021 Program | Buffer Fringe 2021 Poster