VEKA - What is it all about?
Is this your first year at Volda Universty College? Are you a new exchange student? Then you might have noticed there’s a lot of things going on around the university and the town. This week and also the upcoming one is full of events because of VEKA 2019. Still don’t know what is it?
Hello VEKA!
VEKA (which means “the week” in Norwegian) is a festival made by students hosted at Rokken Student House. It started on February 10th and it will end on 23rd this month. Almost every town who has university or college has a Veka festival with the aim of “getting everyone together while having some music culture” explains Susanne Storaker, leader of VEKA. And now Volda is celebrating its 34th edition.
The festival is open to everyone, you can find day time events, especially during the weekends as they have some things for kids and families, but most of them, takes place at night, and the majority of events are music concerts. If you’re wondering which concerts people are expecting the most, the true is students are so excited to go to Boy Pablo’s concert, a 19 year- old singer who started in the music industry two years ago and he’s now finding success in the United States (he’ll be performing on Coachella this year). Another group people are crazy about is Cinnamon City, a Volda music band which will bring lot of fun and party through 90’s songs until today. Although VEKA is expecting a really good number of attendants every day.
If you want to attend any event you can buy the tickets via Tikkio.
Living VEKA in a different way
There’s a lot of different ways of living an event, a concert or festival. Being a volunteer and taking part from the inside is one of the most challenging, fun and gratifying ways to experience VEKA. Pamela Donkor studies social work at Høgskulen I Volda. She was a volunteer last year and will repeat in this edition.
“Last year I worked as a crew and I had to control who came in, so I was registering bags and checking ID’s and also putting stamps on the hand” remembers Pamela.
“First of all, I wanted to work at the bar but it was full so I decided to work at crew which I loved. The best thing about working as a crew is that everyone is really nice, and there’s many internationals too so it’s nice to meet new people. I really like this festival. It’s kind of a celebration and people are more social, they talk more and are excited for the concerts”.
Would you like to be a volunteer?
As the festival is hosted at Rokken the only way to participate at VEKA it’s to became a Rokken volunteer. “If you’re a volunteer at Rokken, you get a contract that says that you’ll work at least one time during VEKA. And if you work more than two or three shifts you get free tickets or even a pass for the whole festival” says the leader of VEKA. Also, Pamela who became volunteer for the first time last year, sounds really excited talking about her decision “Rokken is one of the best things I’ve joined because most of my friends here in Volda worked in Rokken and I met them there. Every international should join Rokken because it’s very social, it’s very fun, and participating at VEKA you can meet a lot of people, talk to Norwegians and you can go to all the concerts so it’s great”
If you like the idea of being part of this festival as a volunteer and want to participate next year, now you know what you have to do but until then, enjoy VEKA 2019.