We continue our series of stories on graffiti women for the GraFEM blog with a legendary writer! Vixen is known to anyone who has ever seen her plump green birds or rounded pink ponies on walls around the world. She came late to graffiti, doing her first ones at the age of twenty. Under the...Continue Reading

This is Part Two of the piece by Helena Konda about the Slovenian rebel graffiti women in the second world war. (You can read Part One here.) Ljubljana experienced its first flourishing of what we would now call political graffiti and street art under the Italian fascist occupation of 1941 to 1943, when movement was...Continue Reading

Ljubljana probably experienced its first flourishing of what we would now call political graffiti and street art under the Italian fascist occupation of 1941 to 1943, when movement was restricted, a curfew was in force and popular protest was suppressed. Acts of rebellion within the public space were largely carried out by women and included...Continue Reading

All our Ljubljana urban tours can function as a great birthday present, marriage anniversary present, business gift etc. If a private theme tour of Ljubljana is your present of choice for a person, or a group of persons, please fill in the form below and we will send you the invoice. Following the purchase you...Continue Reading

We begin our series of stories for the GraFEM blog with writer DEE282, the first woman in Slovenia to spray paint subcultural graffiti. She painted her first graffiti on a non-authorised wall at the age of twenty-one and was a member of Ljubljana’s Guten Tag Crew for a number of years. In the mid-1990s, when...Continue Reading

At the moment, we are not running our tours and we don’t know when or whether we will be able to start again. The Coronavirus situation might force us to close shop. But we try to stay optimistic and behave like everything will go back to normal sooner or later. Before that happens, however, we...Continue Reading

Recently, Urbana Vrana Institute and RogLab have started a special programme to encourage the creation of graffiti and street art by women. Called GraFEM (the name combines the “gra” from “graffiti” and the “fem” from “female”), it aims to empower female graffiti and street artists and promote women’s graffiti and street art culture. Incidentally, linguistics...Continue Reading

The Ljubljana Feminist Bike Tour is a new take on the popular Ljubljana Feminist Tour, an educational two-hour walk around the city centre that has been run by the Urbana Vrana association since July 2017. Offering a gender perspective on Slovenia’s capital, Ljubljana Feminist Tour has become a Ljubljana mainstay. It is a popular way...Continue Reading

Please note! This is merely hypothetical. Just some random thoughts. Just words on paper. Here I am, dreaming, doodling, thinking, looking at the map and all four corners of the sky. Where to go, what to do? I’m thinking about what’s worth seeing and I’m trying to think of interesting people with stories to tell...Continue Reading

In November 2019, the P74 Gallery in Ljubljana hosted RIO: Begnagrad, Srp, D’Pravda, an exhibition that covered the work of three Slovenian bands from the late seventies and early eighties that were not part of the punk and new wave scene per se, but nevertheless belonged to a circle of alternative and independent music artists...Continue Reading

The one thing I always notice braving the serpentine-like winding roads from Ljubljana towards North Primorska region is the dominance of green. And blue. All shades of green and blue. Lorca would appreciate it. There seems to be nothing but “verde te quiero verde” – green woods, green meadows, green pastures, green trees, green grass....Continue Reading

No, this is not about the birds and the bees, but about how folk music is made in a specific location. Who creates it, who discovers it, who transforms it? How and why? Folk music is something old, something that is transmitted from generation to generation by word of mouth, something authentic, primordial, something that...Continue Reading

mmOver thousands of years humankind developed many ways of expressing its inner self, its “soul”, its connection to the natural or supernatural worlds. Music has always played an integral part of the process, from indigenous and shamanic rituals to the religious ceremonies or new age celebrations. Spiritual elements in music – speaking as broadly and...Continue Reading

Slovenian electronic music producer Gramatik is undoubtedly one of the most interesting global musicians of the last decade. Not only because of his unique type of dance music which has millions of views on YouTube, but also because he makes his work available for free. His winning recipe is a mixture of hip hop beats,...Continue Reading

One night several years ago, in Ljubljana’s then jazz-oriented Sax Pub, I faced a dilemma. Should I order another beer? Or should I make a beeline home, since my boisterous friends have left me to my own devices in order to achieve their higher purpose? If I’m not mistaken, the clock was nearing half past...Continue Reading

Solo female vocal artists aside, let’s check out the (post-)Yugoslav all-female bands rocking the stage since the 1960s. Beat We are kicking off with Belgrade’s Sanjalice (1965–1969), the only band from a bunch of 1960s Yugoslav all-women beat groups that back then managed to record some songs. Actually, they released several best-selling EP singles and...Continue Reading

She is dressed in black, she is unmarried and childless, her poems and literature draw topics from Slovenian folk tales, and she is a behemothic lover of cats. For the mentioned reasons she is often referred to in general public as ‘the witch’. She is also outspoken, controversial, provocative, and rebellious. Certainly not something society...Continue Reading

We bring you some of the most extraordinary Yugoslav electronic gems that found their way to various (re)releases in Europe and the US. Read part one here.   Slovenian Electric Dreams Considering the early 1980s electronica in Slovenia, one has to acknowledge not only the underground heroes but also Miha Kralj’s pioneering role in bringing...Continue Reading

We bring you some of the most extraordinary Yugoslav electronic gems that found their way to various (re)releases in Europe and the US. Read part two here. In the last years, various collections of electronic music from former Yugoslavia popped up, ranging from numerous streamable and downloadable CDR mixtapes and bold releases by small labels...Continue Reading

Laibach is the German name for Ljubljana, the capital of Slovenia. It is however also the name of a controversial music group formed on 1 June 1980 in Trbovlje, Slovenia, which at the time was part of socialist Yugoslavia. Laibach were the predecessor, and the musical section, of the influential 1980s art movement Neue Slowenische...Continue Reading

[English version below] Z veseljem vas obveščamo, da smo spet začeli izvajati naše ture. Čeprav je koronavirus močno prizadel našo dejavnost in kulturno-turistični sektor na splošno, ostajamo nepopravljivi optimisti. Zavedamo se, da so časi še vedno kritični, zato pozivamo vse, da ostanete previdni, odgovorni in prijazni do sočloveka. Vsi naši sprehodi in kolesarske ture so...Continue Reading

Only a few months ago the global media got flabbergasted by the fact that Vienna opera house for the first time in its entire 150-year history staged an opera created by a woman. Austrian composer’s name is Olga Neuwirth. Event itself was even more significant for its symbolic power as the opera was based on...Continue Reading

Slovenia’s capital boasts a venue that the so called Prince of Darkness wanted for his musical residence. Truly, the Križanke Outdoor Theatre set up inside the courtyard of the former Monastery of the Holy Cross in Ljubljana’s city centre, impressed Nick Cave so much that many years ago he fell in love with it and...Continue Reading

[English version below] Trenutno naših tur ne izvajamo in ne vemo, kdaj jih bomo spet lahko, če sploh. Kajti situacija s koronavirusom nas lahko porine čez rob. Kljub temu ostajamo optimisti in upamo, da se bodo stvari prej kot slej uredile. Do takrat pa nam bo prav prišla tudi kakšna pomoč. Pravzaprav nam lahko pomagate...Continue Reading

Ja, nikamor ne gremo. Zato se lahko že prijavite na prvo Ljubljansko feministično turo “za izven” v letu 2020! Zimskega spanja je konec in kot nekatere_i že veste, smo že v polnem pogonu. Če niste zasledili, si lahko med novicami na naši spletni strani preberete, da je Urbana Vrana soustanoviteljica Globalne mreže feminističnih tur in...Continue Reading

Ljubljanska pankerska tura se prebuja iz zimskega spanca. Kmalu boste spet lahko užili Esadov poetični duh, vključno z njegovim žongliranjem z besedami. Kdaj? V soboto 21. marca ob 14. uri. Zborno mesto je zdaj že klasično stičišče vseh poti v nekdanjem Leninovem parku (danes Argentinski). Zaključek pa bo tri ure kasneje, torej ob 17. uri...Continue Reading

[Slovenian version below.] Connecting the feminist guides The Urbana Vrana association has become a co-founder of the Global Network of Feminist Tours that stretches from Chile to Thailand. How did this happen? In recent months, organisations Paseos por la ciudad from New York, FemiTours from Buenos Aires and Tours with Meaning from Santiago de Chile...Continue Reading

Last week we were delighted by an unexpected invitation. The Amnesty International Slovenia team, led by director Nataša Posel, who joined  our feminist tours a few months ago, invited us to a festive event at the Ljubljana City Hall. There was also a discussion there about a topic that is very close to us: Ljubljana’s...Continue Reading

V septembru in oktobru bodo na Letnem vrtu kluba Gala Hala potekale brezplačne grafitarske delavnice za učence 7., 8. in 9. razreda osnovnih šol v Mestni občini Ljubljana v okviru projekta Grafitarnice v produkciji Zavoda Culturemaker, #Kratka predstavitev projekta Grafitarnice  V Ljubljani nas grafiti in street art spremljajo na vsakem koraku, pri čemer si včasih...Continue Reading