Pohoda’s Statement Regarding Grape Festival’s Relocation to Trenčín Airport
“On December 1st, the official statement about Grape Festival’s relocation to Trenčín Airport was released. Festival representative Peter Slameň informed me about this decision during a meeting on November 11th and it was indeed a surprising step. A year ago, Pohoda and Grape team representatives held a meeting together where three festival representatives – Ján Trstenský, Juraj Podmanický and Peter Slameň – promised Grape would not be moving to Trenčín. Given our professional and personal relationships, there was no reason to suspect they wouldn’t keep their promise.
03. December 2021
Our agreement was based on debates that started on November 6th 2019. During these meetings, even Grape organizers declared on several occasions that this would be the worst solution and it could possibly harm both festivals for a variety of reasons, the most obvious one being festivals’ identity. In festival Europe, you wouldn’t find a situation where two country’s biggest events with similar genre setting took place at the same venue. This wouldn’t happen in Slovakia either if everything followed elementary logic and standard procedures.
In the end, Grape did not opt for the only possible solution, but the easiest one. After fourteen years of serving as Pohoda’s venue, Trenčín Airport is a ready-to-use spot. It wasn’t always like that: Pohoda has invested a lot of time, energy and money to make the place functional. The festival set up cooperation with surrounding villages as well as the city of Trenčín. Given Grape was arranging their relocation to the airport without Pohoda’s knowledge, or rather, with a literal promise not to move to Trenčín, there hasn’t been any discussion on what the mutual presence at the venue should look like either. We don’t know how Ján Trstenský, Juraj Podmanický and Peter Slameň envision a potential collaboration with Pohoda as they managed to deceive Pohoda before their actual arrival to Trenčín.
As promoters who have been in the business since 1997, we fully understand how important it is for the music scene to have well functioning clubs or festivals. That’s also why Pohoda has been supporting and collaborating with clubs and other festivals for many years. Coherence and mutual trust are important elements on the scene. Grape has broken these basic principles and we as Pohoda, unfortunately, have to dissociate from them. The statement that Pohoda and Grape festivals are completely different has never been as true as right now. We’ll keep on following our path”.