Night of the Arts draws 35,000 to Senate Square concert

Police report evening goes off exceptionally peacefully

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The annual Night of the Arts, part of the Helsinki Festival, was celebrated on Friday. The weathermen got it right and the rain stayed away, and the combination of a warm August evening and a free concert drew a crowd of around 35,000 to the Senate Square, completely packing the square.
      The concert, the largest single event on a crowded Night of the Arts programme directed at adults and children alike, featured Finnish artists covering numbers that had first been released in 1968, the year in which the Helsinki Festival was founded.
     
The songs for the Rock, rytmi ja rakkaus (“Rock, Rhythm & Love”) concert set-list were selected by the public in an online vote (see earlier article), and performed by guest soloists backed by a house band of well-known musicians.
      According to Superintendent Jussi-Pekka Lämsä of the Helsinki Police Department, the entire evening went off exceptionally peacefully, given the number of people who were out and about.
      Police had no more to deal with than on a normal Friday evening.
      This reflects a shift in the tone of the Night of the Arts in recent years, after the Helsinki Festival changed the format of what was becoming a rather liquid and restless event.
     
An estimated 100,000 people all told took part in the more than 200 events arranged around the capital.
      As bookstores, libraries, and galleries kept their doors open until the small hours, the programme included poetry readings, street theatre, open-air cinema screenings, Japanese martial arts displays, public rehearsals at the National Opera, and even a party to mark the second anniversary of the “Declaration of Independence” of the micronation Valtio, the brainchild of a Finnish journalist.


See also:
  A picture cavalcade from the Night of the Arts (captions in Finnish; some pictures also featured with the article)

Links:
  Helsinki Festival Night of the Arts
  The Kingdom of Valtio (Wikipedia)

Helsingin Sanomat