Cultural Dialogues – Friendship Bridges

From June 2025 to October 2026, with the support of the Presidential Fund for Cultural Initiatives, the international project Cultural Dialogues – Friendship Bridges is being implemented.

The project applicant is the Karelian Foundation for Public Diplomacy Development and its partners are the Petrozavodsk State Glazunov Conservatoire, the Belarusian State Academy of Music, and the Kurmangazy Kazakh National Conservatory.

The project aims to introduce students from the three countries to the musical traditions of Russia, Belarus, and Kazakhstan, their national and regional characteristics, as well as the works of contemporary composers. It seeks to develop educational and cultural ties between the countries and foster interethnic musical cooperation. Students of the Petrozavodsk Conservatoire from the People’s Republic of China are actively participating in the project’s events.

In November 2025, an International Music School was held in Petrozavodsk and across the Republic of Karelia, dedicated to the 160th anniversary of the outstanding Russian composer and educator Alexander Glazunov. Teaching staff and students from the conservatories of all three countries participated in the event. The school’s program featured rehearsals and a concert by a combined symphony orchestra, a joint concert by participants, masterclasses by experts, creative meetings, a seminar, and a round table dedicated to the training of orchestral musicians and the development of symphonic schools.

In 2026, students and professional musicians will present online programs to their partners, presenting the musical cultures and traditions of their countries, as well as contemporary performers and composers.

On April 8, within the online conference "Musical Traditions of Karelia" the distinctive features of the national cultures of the indigenous ethnic groups of Karelia were presented to the partners from Belarus and Kazakhstan by professors from the Department of Music of Finno-Ugric Peoples of the Petrozavodsk Conservatoire - Igor Solovyov, Svetlana Nikolaeva, Natalia Mikhailova, Vera Shvetsova and Alevtina Voitovich, the keeper of the conservatoire’s folklore archive.

Students involved in the scientific component of the project will present their papers at spring academic events in all three countries. Joint publications will be released in an electronic collection of scientific articles and in the final electronic publication of the project’s materials.