The well-known Slovak jewelry maker and designer Petra Toth announced via social networks that her studio will not participate in this year’s Folklore Festival in Východná.

According to her, the long-term cooperation collapsed due to the sudden lack of interest on the part of the festival management.

This year, the Petra Toth brand was supposed to function as an official partner of the festival for the fifth year. In addition to financial support, the studio, in cooperation with the ethnologist, prepared a free program, workshops and lectures in the new foundation stand. At the same time, the designer has been working on a special jewelry collection inspired by the patterns of the Východná village since the fall of last year, while she planned to donate the proceeds from the sale to a local folklore group.

However, according to Petra Toth, dozens of e-mails and phone calls sent to the organizers remained unanswered. Subsequently, information reached her through behind-the-scenes sources that she was a “persona non grata” at the festival.

Aktuality.sk found in the central register several partnership agreements between the National Education Center as the main organizer of the well-known festival and the Petra Toth company. The one from last year was 3,690 euros including VAT.

He already has a negative experience from the past

In a status on the social network, the jeweler recalled that her business was never dependent on state subsidies or grants. In connection with the state’s approach, she also mentioned a negative experience from the World Expo in Dubai, where her jewelry for Čičmany spent a large part of the event in a container at the port and later ended up being displayed in undignified conditions “somewhere behind the bar”.

According to her, the current decision of the Východná festival exactly illustrates how Slovakia values ​​people who are trying to create, build and save values ​​at the expense of empty talk.

Aktuality.sk was contacted with a request for a response from the main organizer – the National Awareness Center. After obtaining it, we will supplement it.

Last year, she called with an offer to save the endangered festival

Petra Toth came forward with an offer for financial help last year as well, when the Podpolianske osvetové center announced that, due to the delay in the decisions of the Council of the Fund for the Support of Art, it would probably not be able to organize the traditional Festival of Children’s Folklore Ensembles in Zvolen. “When the system fails, we have to (we believe temporarily) replace it,” she wrote at the time regarding the offer to compensate for the delayed subsidy from the FPU.

The Children’s Folklore Festival finally took place last year thanks to a non-systematic contribution from the national lottery company Tipos, and the money was sent late, but still, by the criticized fund under the Ministry of Culture of Martina Šimkovičová (nom. SNS).

This year, however, the same festival did not take place, the organizer decided to cancel it due to the uncertainty of whether he would receive the subsidy, in order to avoid fiasco and problems. The art support fund gave him 11,000 euros a few weeks after the cancellation of the event.