Foreign media spares no praise when covering STARMUS (Stars and Music), the international science and art festival. The Sun has dubbed it “Out of this world Festival”, Bloomberg describes it as “History’s most-impossible Science Festival”, and Forbes considers STARMUS “The world’s most exciting science festival”.

In 2019, Armenian President Armen Sarkissian suggested holding the next STARMUS in Yerevan.

STARMUS founder and chief organizer, astrophysicist Garik Israelian visited Yerevan on January 13-17, 2019 to meet Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, Minister of Education, Science, Culture and Sport Arayik Harutyunyan, Minister of High-Tech Industry Hakob Arshakyan, Yerevan Mayor Hayk Marutyan and other officials.

Nikol Pashinyan later announced that his government was ready to assist in any possible way to see the festival organized at a high level.

In this interview to Mediamax Garik Israelian sums up the results of his visit and tells about the agreements he has reached with the Armenian government.

The timeframe

We agreed with the Prime Minister that the government would perform as the main sponsor of the festival. We held STARMUS in many cities and the hosting country always provided support on many issues.

We already have several commercial sponsors, but the state’s contribution still matters not only in terms of financing, but also for the purpose of highlighting the importance of the festival for the country.

Now, when that agreement is made, the members of STARMUS Board have to determine the timeframe as soon as possible.

Garik Israelian and the participants of STARMUS 2019 in Zurich Photo: Getty Images

We’re weighing two options: early October of 2020 and May or June of 2021. Setting the timeframe is important to handle both the organizational efforts and the invitations properly. We are going to invite at least 10 Nobel Prize laureates along with big IT names, astronauts, musicians and artists. I’ve spoken already with many of them, so the initial agreement is in place, but now we need to make things concrete.

If we choose October 2020, the theme of the festival could be “Peace in the space” in commemoration of the 45th anniversary of Apollo–Soyuz Test Project, in which case we shall invite Russian and American astronauts who were part of it. As for 2021, we’ve got some good ideas in development.

STARMUS has to cooperate very closely with Yerevan Municipality, the Ministry of Education, Science, Culture and Sport, the Ministry of High-Tech Industry. The President and Prime Minister will help us make the festival the biggest event in the region.

Level and format

To me, it is a matter of principle that we don’t simply maintain the quality we secured in Spain, Norway or Switzerland but actually take the level of the Armenian edition of STARMUS higher. In fact, I have no doubt that STARMUS Armenia is going to surprise the whole world and remain in history as “the festival of festivals”. We can outdo the previous editions, we know how to achieve that goal.

STARMUS is a global festival and people from different countries will come to Yerevan the same way they traveled to Zurich, for instance, to participate in the festival.

By the way, we want to set the ticket prices much lower for the Armenian citizens. We usually manage to cover certain expenditure with the revenue from the tickets, but it won’t be the case for STARMUS Armenia.

Garik Israelian and the participants of STARMUS 2019 in Zurich Photo: Getty Images

Contrary to a lot of conferences and summits that start early in the morning, STARMUS hosts participants and guests from 14:00 until 18:00 and has a one-hour break. Every speaker gets 10-15 minutes. We always invite comedians who “specialize” in science; they come onto the stage after a few serious speeches and help the audience to freshen up.

It allows the participants to feel more at ease and gives them free morning and evening hours to do as they like.

City programme

We really want to have the City Programme in Armenia, like we did in Norway. The festival kicks off and for one week we hold events in various formats. Nobel Prize laureates, astronauts and musicians visit schools and universities, and a multi-purpose “Science village” opens in the center of the city. People can learn about robots and experiments and talk with the scientists in the pavilions. The village also hosts concerts, book fairs and film screenings.

In Norway, 50,000 people took part in City Programme. The entire city got involved. I really want us to do the same in Yerevan.

Ara Tadevosyan