Umbul Umbul Festival Bali – Uniting the Colors of the World

August 27-30, 2004

YouTube: Umbul Umbul Festival Bali – Uniting the Colors of the World

Children and artists from over 50 countries paint a flag for the first Umbul Umbul Festival in Bali.

After the Bali bombing 2002, elders and artists gathered and reflected "what we can do to prevent such incidents". As a result, the Umbul Umbul Festival came to life.

For all the participants the festival was a successful and rich experience: Four days with exhibition, procession, performance and inspiring encounters.

Umbul Umbuls – traditional Balinese flags for festive events - have an important meaning for the people of Bali, but they also hold the potential to become a medium for the many peoples of the world.

In 1989, at the instigation by the Rainbow Project, the Umbul Umbuls began to leave their cultural home. Since then they have developed into a creative medium with which people and projects can send their colorful messages out into the world.

In 2004, all the colors did return to Bali to the Umbul Umbul Festival and "will help to generate an energy that will nourish our hearts", as the Balinese organizer and partner wrote.

The three-day festival was initiated and organized by the Arti Foundation, an arts and cultural foundation in Denpasar, Bali, in cooperation with Thomas Bertschi, Rainbow Project. Grounds for the celebrations was the variety of life in Bali, the island world of Indonesia, and of the planet Earth. The festival did provide a forum for people from different cultures, people who consider the future of the world and who came together to exchange information and inspire one another.

The high points of the festival were the Umbul Umbul exhibition, the Umbul Umbul competition, the Umbul Umbul procession, concerts given by musicians from different cultures, performances and discussions that did draw in all the participants and did cover themes relating to the human community, nature and spirituality.

Children and artists from the following countries did participate with a painted Umbul Umbul Rainbow Flag: Greece, Afganistan, Israel, Nepal, USA, Niger, Bosnia, Mazedonia, Slowakia, Hungary, Bolivia, Peru, Brasilia, Spain, Namibia, Germany, Zimbabwe, Switzerland, Kosovo, Egypt, China, Kroatia, Cambodia, Lebanon, Denmark, India, Sri Lanka, New Zealand, Austria, Sweden, Australia, England, Japan, Vietnam, Lichtenstein, Slowenia, Lithuania, Indonesia.

Further information is contained in the flyer to the festival. This is available, in English only, as a pdf file with illustrations in two versions.

Flyer in monitor quality
72dpi, the document will open as a new window.

Flyer in print quality
300dpi, beware, the file is 3.2MB in size. It will open as a new window, , so please be patient. The document is double-sided. It can be printed, mounted, cropped and folded in three. For a printout in A3 landscape format with layout markings, it should be printed at 91% and centered.

Messages from the Children of the World 

For the Umbul Umbul exhibition, school classes from various countries of the world were invited to paint an Umbul Umbul. In the spirit of the Balinese Tri Hita Karana, the description of the harmonious relationship between man and environment, man and man and man and deity, the festival did offer schools plenty of freedom in the preparation of a colorful message for the world. The adopted themes were: human society, art, nature and spirituality - Messages from the Children of the World.

The cost of these flags were financed through sponsorship. Sponsors could enable a school class to take part in the Umbul Umbul Festival in Bali with its own self-painted flag. The sponsors did decide what should happen to their flag after the festival.

A patronage comitee with personalities from the cultural life of Switzerland was backing the festival: Dimitri (Clown), Gardi Hutter (female Clown), Claude Sandoz (painter), Balts Nill (musician Stiller Haas), Elsbeth Müller (head of Unicef CH), Andreas Vollenweider (musician), Harald Szeemann (exhibition designer), Ted Scapa (artist, former publisher of Benteli publishing house), Linard Bardill (musician and author), Gottfried Honegger (painter).

«Supported by Switzerland».
EPartner of the festival was "Presence Switzerland". The festival was also supported by the gouverneur of Bali, the Swiss consul in Bali and the Swiss embassy in Jakarta.

Sponsors