Over a 100 people took part in this year’s Prešeren Evening of the British-Slovene Society, held for the first time on Zoom rather than in a hotel in London. Shirlie Roden, Zoran Predin, Aleksander Mežek, The Lakeland Voices, the Plamen Choir from Canada and Vlado Kreslin treated us to a brilliant concert of music and song.

Vid Kocijan, John Dawton and Barbara Predin presented and recited Prešeren’s poetry. Andrej Rozman Roza gave us an amusing satirical sketch poking fun at Slovenes’ stingy attitudes towards culture.

A collection was taken for the Barka charity supporting people with special needs in Slovenia.

If you missed the event, which took place on 13th February, you can catch up on the YouTube link below:

Pred kratkim je bil na Valu 202 pogovor z Lanom Artisom. Jeseni je z odliko opravil magisterij za pisce scenarijev in si utira pot v svet filma. Pri tem pa ostaja prizemljen in si s kuhanjem služi svoj vsakdanji kruh.

Tukaj je posnetek pogovora:https://val202.rtvslo.si/2021/01/globalna-vas-115/

Dear Members and Friends,

Don’t miss the British-Slovene Society’s online Prešeren Evening on Saturday 13th February! At 1800 UK time, 1900 Slovenian time.

This year, no cocktails, dinner and mixing in a London hotel. We’ll be online on Zoom, and we’re making the most of it!  We’ve lined up an array of Slovenia’s finest popular singers and moving recitals of Prešeren’s poems (one sung by our own Shirlie Roden).

Plus two great choirs. One from Sedbergh in Cumbria, twinned with Zreče in Slovenia. The other is group of Slovene singers from Canada.

After the performance, we’ll have Zoom »chat rooms« on which you can socialise with friends old and new.

Here’s the Zoom link:

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/2784357597?pwd=czdsdHI3TWhQNC9IY3JKVXVEekhzZz09

Meeting ID: 278 435 7597
Passcode: Preseren21

Here is the link on YouTube where you can view the event: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6TUI4tMOrJk

The chat rooms will only operate on Zoom.

Don’t forget: Saturday, 13th February at 1800 UK time, 1900 Slovenian time, 1300 Canadian time. Thanks to Zoom, you can join in from anywhere!

You can take part for free. If you wish, you’ll be able to make a charity donation through this link, which will also be displayed during the event. The proceeds will be equally divided between the Barka charity we support and our Society

 https://www.paypal.com/donate?hosted_button_id=ZY36WP8H5CYM6

As published earlier, the British-Slovene Society will celebrate France Prešeren on 13th February 2021 with a performance of poems and songs online. The Zoom link will follow shortly.

The Slovenian Embassy in London is meanwhile also celebrating the Slovene national poet and Slovenia’s Day of Culture on 8th February.

See the invitation from the Slovenian Embassy below:

You can further explore the richly diverse cultural programme made available online by cultural institutions in Slovenia in celebration of Prešeren Day, details of which are available HERE

Please note that the programme is primarily in Slovene language.

Reserve time at 6pm on Saturday 13^th February for the British-Slovene Society’s special online Prešeren Evening. We are preparing an attractive programme of recitals and singing to mark the 220^th anniversary of the poet’s birth. We will inform you of the link nearer the time.

Due to the Covid pandemic we will not be able to meet in person, and so we will produce our Prešeren Evening in the same way as the last Christmas Carol Service.  For those who could not attend that, here is the link to the recording on YouTube: https://youtu.be/hDtKUwsmoVE.  

The Christmas event caught the attention of the Slovene Radio Prvi channel which featured it on the evening of Christmas day: https://4d.rtvslo.si/arhiv/slovencem-po-svetu/174742304. We collected £275 for the Barka charity we support in Slovenia.

Also, you may know that the traditional Slovene hayrack (kozolec) in Harcourt Arboretum has been dismantled but we are making arrangements for a new one to be set up in Henley-on-Thames. We hope to be able to celebrate 30 years of Slovenia’s independence around the new hayrack.

Here is a letter we received from the Delegation of the European Union to the United Kingdom:

Dear Colleagues, Friends and Slovenian citizens at the British Slovene Society,

My name is Angela, writing to you from the European Union Delegation to the UK in London – a very Happy New Year to you.

You are well aware that as a result of Brexit, Slovenian citizens and their family members must apply for a new immigration status under the UK Government’s EU Settlement Scheme if they intend to continue to live in the UK. Failing to do so will result in these citizens not having an immigration status in the UK beyond 30 June 2021.

Vulnerable groups of citizens – such as the elderly, those with lower digital literacy and limited access to the online application process, children in care, those with lower levels of English, those who live in poverty and many more) – may not be aware that they need to take action and could find it more challenging to submit an application for the new status. Furthermore, in the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic helping citizens through face-to-face contacts has become more difficult than ever.

In order to get information to those who need this the most the EU Delegation has published a series of information leaflets which are available here:

• What you need to know as an EU citizen living in the UK
• What you need to know as a senior EU citizen living in the UK
• What you need to know as a non-EU citizen living in the UK if you have, or had, a family connection to an EU citizen
• What you need to know if your child is an EU citizen or if your child is not an EU citizen but you are

We understand that you may have had the capacity before Covid-19 to reach Slovenian citizens in the UK. In case you still can, we’d be grateful if you could share the above online publications through your channels.

Also, we’re translating all our publications to Slovenian and are also able to send print copies in bulk for free to a select number of organisations that may still be able to hand these out.

If you or your organisation / group would be interested receiving print copies could you please signal this by sending an e-mail to EU-CITIZENS-RIGHTS@eeas.europa.eu as soon as you can, providing the following information:

–        Your name, your organisation’s name, telephone number and delivery address

–        The type of leaflet you are interested in (currently the above 3 are available)

–        The EU languages in which you would like to receive these (by default we’d send English copies)

–        The number of copies that you’d want to receive (there are usually 200 copies in a box and we can only send these by the box. Each box will need to contain the same language copies – i.e. at this stage unfortunately we cannot mix languages in a single box)

Thank you for any help raising awareness amongst Slovenian citizens and their family members.

With best wishes,

Angela

Angela Mammarella

Citizens’ Rights Support Agent

Delegation of the European Union to the United Kingdom

________________________________________________

Office: 32 Smith Square, London SW1P 3EU

Phone: +44 (0)20 7973 1933

Angela.Mammarella@eeas.europa.eu

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Valentin Mohar and Ivan Lavrič, post-war Slovene refugees who emigrated to Britain, tell their stories in video interviews recorded by ŠCNR (Študijski center za narodno spravo). Both were long-time members of the British-Slovene Society.

The interviews were recorded in Slovene in 2011 and distributed now by ŠCNR. Click on these links:   

http://zakladnicaspominov-scnr.si/2018/12/13/valentin-mohar/
http://zakladnicaspominov-scnr.si/2018/12/12/ivan-lavric/

Commentary by ŠCNR:

To je pripoved dveh pričevalcev iz Loškega Potoka, Ivana in Valentina, ki ju je zaradi razmer po koncu druge svetovne vojne pot vodila iz rodne Slovenije v Anglijo. Odstrla nam bosta pogled na dogajanje med vojno, delovanje v primorski varnostni straži in večmesečno bivanje po italijanskih taboriščih.

Društvo VTIS letos organizira peti Simpozij slovenskih znanstevnikov v tujini. 

Začel se bo z okroglo mizo z naslovom ”Sobivanje slovenskega in angleškega jezika v slovenskem akademskem prostoru – izzivi, priložnosti in dileme”.

Sledili bodo paneli iz naslednjih raziskovalnih področij:

➡️ Odgovorne tehnologije,

➡️ Astronomija,

➡️ Intermedijska umetnost in kulturna dediščina,

➡️ Razvojno inovacijska strategija Slovenije (RISS) 2030 in internacionalizacija,

➡️ Mikrobiologija in infekcijske bolezni.

Vabljeni, da se jim pridružite in prisluhnete zanimivim predavanjem in razpravam priznanih slovenskih raziskovalcev v tujini, ki bodo predstavili svoja raziskovalna dela.

Dogodek je brezplačen, prijave so obvezne: https://lnkd.in/gED8N9z

https://m.facebook.com/events/200652241656848

https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/activity:6739949737417564160

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/5-simpozij-slovenskih-raziskovalcev-v-tujini-tickets-129489880719