VOOLP Festival — Your Ears Have the Floor

VOOLP: Living Word at the Heart of Alsace

The VOOLP — Vos Oreilles Ont La Parole festival was born from a dual ambition of the Haut-Rhin and Bas-Rhin departmental media libraries: to promote the arts of storytelling and oral traditions to a wider audience, and to ensure their dissemination through quality performances throughout the Alsatian region, including in small towns. Since its creation around 2010, the festival has grown to become one of the most important storytelling events in the Grand Est region.

A Traveling Festival Throughout Haut-Rhin

VOOLP's strength lies in its local roots. Performances are not concentrated in a single city but are spread across the libraries, media libraries, citizen centers, and community halls of dozens of towns in Haut-Rhin: Bollwiller, Lutterbach, Kingersheim, Bantzenheim, and many others. This itinerant nature allows it to reach a diverse audience, from the urban centers of the Mulhouse agglomeration to the rural villages of the Alsatian plain and the Vosges valleys.

The Art of Storytelling in All Its Forms

The festival's program encompasses the full diversity of oral storytelling arts. The invited storytellers—around thirty each year, from all over France and sometimes abroad—offer traditional Alsatian tales, West African legends, fantasy stories, love stories, philosophical tales, and performances blending music and narration. Some shows are specially designed for young audiences aged 3 and up, while others are aimed at teenagers and adults.

A Network of 250 Volunteers and 170 Librarians

The organization of the festival mobilizes an impressive network of 250 volunteers and 170 professional librarians throughout Alsace. This human network ensures a warm welcome at each performance venue and high-quality cultural mediation. Librarians prepare thematic book selections in advance, related to the stories presented, thus extending the experience of the performance through reading.

Now "L'Alsace se (ra)conte"

Supported since 2021 by the European Collectivity of Alsace (CeA), the festival has evolved to also include a heritage and bilingual component, under the name "L'Alsace se (ra)conte" (Alsace Tells Its Story). Each edition is built around a unifying theme—nature, origins, travel—which permeates the entire program. Performances in Alsatian dialect, bilingual storytelling, and shows in heritage sites like the Château du Hohlandsbourg enrich this new dimension of the festival.