The Inventory Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH) in the Netherlands contains ICH of which the communities, groups or individuals involved have written a safeguarding plan. Those plans are reviewed by an independent review committee. Every three years an evaluation of the safeguarding takes place.

Description

The flower parade in Vollenhove is a cultural festivity, linked with the ‘Venose’ (dialect for Vollenhove) Parade Festival. This seven days’ festival takes place in the week before the last Saturday of August, with the flower parade as the absolute highlight on this Saturday. During the parade week the dahlia queen and the dahlia princess are elected. Every participating group chooses its own theme and the design. The floats may contain other materials than dahlias, like cane, cabbage leaves, sand, plastic or paint. Many stories, myths and sagas are depicted in the Vollenhove Flower Parade. There is also much attention for by-play, for theatre, light, sound and movement. The floats have self-driving frames and movable parts in the construction. The Parade Saturday starts in the morning with the Children’s Parade. In the afternoon and the evening the big floats are presented to the public. The whole festival is enlivened by marching bands and fanfares from home and abroad, with a tattoo in the afternoon. There is a strong element of competition. Everyone does the best he can to make the winning float. But in the end, at the concluding float builders feast, everyone is in fact a winner. The social aspect is of great importance.

 

Community

The organising Vollenhoofse Vereniging Voor Volksvermaken (Vollenhove Association for Popular Entertainment) has some 5500 members. The primary schoolchildren are involved in the flower parade: they make their own floats for the Children’s Parade. Welding courses are organised for older children, for this technique is indispensable for building a solid float. Support is offered by the Vollenhove Club of Entrepreneurs, the Interest Group Vollenhove-Stadt and many other organisations.

 

History

In 1905 a number of inhabitants established the Vollenhoofse Vereniging Voor Volksvermaken. A significant objective of the association was the restriction of excessive behaviour during the yearly fair. The Association wanted a civilised popular festivity. It was proposed to concentrate the Fair, in a limited fashion, around the birthday of Queen Wilhelmina, on August 3, the local authority agreed with the plans and laid the organisation in the hands of the Association. In the same year 1905 a fanfare was established in Vollenhove. There was a parade of decorated horse-drawn wagons during the popular festivities. Amateur actors performed a play and the fanfare took care of the cheerful element. Up to the fifties the yearly popular festivities were characterised by popular games and large-scale historical dramas. During the fifties the Flower Parade became more important. At first it concerned mainly farm wagons with allegorical representations and from the sixties onwards the flower wagons entered the scene. In 1961 a jury was appointed for awarding a winner in the parade. An increasing number of visitors came to see the parade. In 1970 the flower parade moved through a closed circuit in the inner town in a number of tours. During the seventies the number of participating floats decreased to ten and in the eighties the floats became bigger and bigger. In 1990 the foundation was laid for the current organisation of the Flower Parade. Roadmaps were prepared and the whole festival week in Vollenhove was worked out in detail. People in Vollenhove still mean the Flower Parade when they say: the festival.

 

Contact

Vollenhoofse Vereniging voor Volksvermaken
Postbus 48
8325 ZG
Vollenhove
Overijssel
Netherlands
Website