GOLA Culture, Arts and Ecology NGO is getting ready to organize the 8^th Annual Green Yayla Culture, Arts and Environment Festival in the Eastern Black Sea region on August 16^th, 17^th and 18^th 2013. Each year Gola chooses a theme pertinent to the region’s life and habitat, and this year the theme of the festival will be BEES and TRADITIONAL BEEKEEPING, which the local community member are deeply interested.

Following the festival theme, GOLA NGO will focus on a cultural journey of beekeeping, agro-biocultural changes in time, traditional methods and different aspects on bee keeping.

Festival Organization Committee shapes the theme with new events & activities interacting with local people, academicians and bee co-operatives.

We will soon announce the program and other related news from this website.

Besides, this year, festival will be dedicated to İLYAS CAN who conveyed his environmental and bee keeping experiences to us and contributed greatly to the festival. We tragically lost him last year.

We proudly present our two year old “Lazuri Visinapamt- We are speaking Laz” activity to you and meeting for its third season.

First workshop will take place on 15th October 2012 Monday at 19:00

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The first year of the International Black Sea Music and Arts Festival will feature mostly but not exclusively women artists from the participating countries and cultures of Turkey, Greece, Ukraine, Macedonia, Armenia and Georgia. Supporting the regional cultural rejuvenation by dialogue among artists and will be the focus of the festival by initiating the “Black Sea Cultural Exchange Platform”.

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The 7^th Green Yayla Culture, Arts and Environment Festival started with the steps of long-legged lady Özlem Durmaz in her very interesting costume and the magnificent sounds and rhythms of bagpipe by the talented piper Eda Şatır in a glowing march at the opening ceremony.

All said hello to the festival with the artists, Gola Team and the participants from all four sides of Turkey and the world, and with a broad participation of people from Arhavi at the meeting point of the festival, Arhavi Cumhuriyet Square. The festival people were on the way to Lome (Yolgeçen) Village. After a short speech of Refik Lakerta on fruit trees and the performance of Özlem Durmaz while picking with the help of ‘gudeli’ (type of a local basket), the festival people reached the festival area by crossing the brooks and green hills.

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During these beautiful spring days, the Gola team made the fog lift and set the silver screen on the hillsides of the Kaçkar mountains. The Sine Klass movie theater in Pazar was the first day’s host, and an exceptionally gracious one. After showing the documentary Queen of The Sun, Yusuf Coşkun shared with us experiences accumulated during his many years of beekeeping, in a conversation moderated by Uğur Biryol and Abdurrahman Aydın. We could observe how similar experiences across the world can come together thanks to the cinema.

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GOLA Culture, Arts and Ecology NGO adds a new activity to its organization in The Eastern Black Sea Region of Turkey with Gola Nature Film Festival in Arhavi-Artvin-Turkey and Pazar, Fındıklı-Rize-Turkey between April 27th-29th, 2012.

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