Motel Mozaïque was established in 2001; a festive year in which Rotterdam was the European Capital of Culture. The art festival has been growing bigger and bigger ever since. Unfortunately, popular venues such as Bird and KINO aren't participating locations this year. Nonetheless, the festival has added more locations and now lasts an extra day. 

 

Many MoMo-related events held at multiple locations around Eendrachtsplein are free, which means people come out in full force. The whole city centre really turned upside down during Motel Mozaïque. In addition to the festival, the whole city participates in organising special breakfast concerts, serving festival bites, unique city tours and other nice events.  

Motel Mozaïque focuses on music, poetry, dance as well as crossover forms and is known for its excellent programming. Many artists were already on stage at MoMo, before they broke through nationally or internationally. MoMo has started to expand into new musical genres and art forms, like the new 48-hour non-stop event in Groot Handelsgebouw. This is an area in which the festival has increasingly started to focus on.

 

 

A large part of the artists are from the Netherlands, but by also programming musicians from less obvious countries such as South Africa, Venezuela, Mexico, Angola and Bulgaria, the festival presents a very broad and unique program. 

Motel Mozaique Festival 2018 📷 Nikki SmitsWith beautiful festival locations such as churches Arminius and Paradijskerk as well as the perfect sunny weather at the outdoor location Plaza Mozaïque on Eendrachtsplein, this festival weekend is unforgettable and a must visit for anyone who wants to get to know the city. 

 

Whereas other festivals continue to do the same every year, Motel Mozaïque is constantly developing itself and that’s very interesting to see. The biggest names on the 2018 programme are well known to the casual concertgoer as they frequently perform in the Netherlands. However, at MoMo it's the unknown artists which are the most interesting. 

Even now that the festival has ended, there is still plenty to see and do. In addition to the festival, Motel Mozaïque also organizes concerts throughout the year at various locations in Rotterdam. They organise these events in collaboration with venues such as Rotown, BIRD, LantarenVenster and more.

 

They have proven themselves as a quality event for which can blindly buy tickets for. We'll be there again next year, from the 18th through the 20th of April 2019 and we encourage you to do the same!

 

 

 

The Pillow Fight took place in front of the Laurenskerk (also known as Grote Kerk). We were there and posted a live stream on Facebook. Check it out: 

 

The quota: the electoral quota is the total number of votes cast in an election divided by the number of seats to be distributed. The electoral quota is needed to be able to determine the distribution of seats in the city council after the elections.The total votes cast 230,786 divided by 45 council seats yields a quota of 5.128. 

after the first allocation of the 'full' seats to the parties, seats will still remain. These are called residual seats. These residual seats are distributed according to the 'system of the largest averages'.

 

The residual seat distribution is as follows:

Constituents were also asked to cast a yes or no vote regarding a new law that would allow the collection and sharing of personal data with national and international intelligence agencies. Rotterdam voted 'no'. 
  

 

Much of the success of the TV series can be attributed to presenter and narrator Sir David Attenborough as well as the music composed by Hans Zimmer. Attenborough and Zimmer aren’t present in Rotterdam Ahoy. Tonight's entertainment is provided by the 80-piece The City Of Prague Philharmonic Orchestra, led by Matthew Freeman and joined on stage by presenter Robbert Dijkgraaf. Dijkgraaf narrates the impressive images with introductions, summaries and small jokes. However, since he reads the text from an autocue and because there is a loud echo coming from his microphone, his contribution is not always as good as hoped. 

 

Many of us may have forgotten the music of George Fenton in the previous series, but you will recognize the impressive music of Planet Earth II for sure. Zimmer is famous for creating music for the Dark Knight trilogy, Inception and Gladiator and his music also plays an important role tonight. Composer Hans Zimmer produced the score as well as the main theme for Planet Earth II. The main theme is performed multiple times during the event. Overall, the live orchestral music creates a varied and moving soundtrack to the unique nature images of the BBC and the timing is fantastic.

In Planet Earth II, unique recordings of Earth are made with the help of drones, heat and light sensitive cameras, telelenses and miniature cameras. Tonight, the scene that draws the most attention is also the most famous scene; the harrowing chase scene between the baby iguana and racer snakes in the Galápagos Islands. It's a scene that has gone viral online and widely captivated social media users, but the audience today is reacting as if they were seeing it for the first time. The audience goes all the way with the story and because of the exciting music and the massive screen behind the orchestra, it’s a really intense experience.

 

During ‘Planet Earth II - Live In Concert’ viewers immediately step into the footsteps of the animals themselves and travel with them to a new world. New spectacular landscapes and habitats are visited as viewers are treated to experiences and discoveries which have never been seen before. With the ‘Planet Earth II - Live In Concert,’ a new successful concert series has been born. The live music & visual concept has been preceded by among others such as ‘The Godfather Live in Concert’, ‘Disney in Concert’, ‘Harry Potter in Concert’ and hopefully, someday soon, we'll be able to enjoy ‘Planet Earth III - Live In Concert’ as well.