Georgian International Festival of Arts GIFT in Tbilisi in honor of Michael Tumanishvili is the state festival run by the Ministry of Culture of Georgia and Municipally of Tbilisi, working in Tbilisi since 1997 as the oldest and the major platform in Caucasus for international exchange and cooperation. Since its inception the Gift Festival has hosted more than 300 international visiting groups and companies and yet remains as a flagship culture institution in Georgia bringing excellent culture from overseas. We believe that nurturing a “culture of excellence” directly among the civic society and making it reachable to everyone is also encouraging excellence in every other field, innovation and risk-taking giving us new insights and new understandings of the world around us, and is relevant to every single one of us.
What People Say
“… And like all great festivals –including Edinburgh, at its magnificent best – GIFT is about these mutual acts of giving; allowing the great tradition of Georgian theatre to give itself to the world, and demonstrating to this great and beautiful city that the world does not always arrive to invade and conquer, but sometimes comes to sing, laugh, weep and celebrate, to heal the wounds of history, and to face the future together.”
Joyce McMillan: The GIFT Festival in Tbilisi is a triumph of the creative spirit. The Scotsman
“…The starting point was a sense in the international theatre community that Georgia needed to free itself from the mess that the breakup of the Soviet Union and the ensuing civil conflict had left. GIFT was not only an acronym of the festival’s name, it represented the gift of artistic solidarity from the theatrical world. Much of the impetus came from William Burdett-Coutts, the founder of Assembly (one of the main production companies of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe) and later the Director of London’s Riverside Studios. He garnered the support of many of the great names of British theatre, including Peter Brook, Vanessa Redgrave, Richard Attenborough and Anthony Hopkins, and Burdett-Coutts was a major force in shaping the blueprint for the programming.”
Simon Mundy, in interview with the Artistic Director of the Georgian International Festival of Arts in Honour of Michail Tumanishvili , looks at GIFT’s history and current success
The GIFT festival was accepted and recognised worldwide. It was the only Georgian festival to be a member of the International Festival and Events Association
(IFEA) International Festivals and Events Association
