ESNS presented pop sensation Dua Lipa with The ESNS Excellence Award during the keynote with Dugi & Dua Lipa. The award celebrates her success as an ESNS Exchange Artist. Visiting Groningen for a third time, the keynote interview with the Lipas explored Dua’s career since her first performance at ESNS and their work on the Sunny Hill Foundation and Festival.
The Excellence Award recognizes Dua Lipa for being the most successful act to benefit from the ESNS Exchange scheme (which was previously named European Talent Exchange Programme). The ESNS Excellence Award celebrates acts that positively represent European culture through their music (worldwide). Acts that function as strong ambassadors for European music and as role models for European acts dreaming to make it big.
The keynote interview, hosted by Gordon Masson from IQ magazine, was attended by hundreds of international representatives of the music industry. Dua & Dugi Lipa discussed the release of the Future Nostalgia album during the pandemic, her massively successful world tour and the success of Sunny Hill Festival in Prishtina which was shortlisted for the European Festival Awards and which they hope will not only help put Kosovo on the cultural map, but also raise funds to develop the country’s arts and cultural sector.
Dua Lipa first performed at ESNS at Vera in 2016, returning in 2017 as a winner of the European Border Breakers Awards (EBBA), which is now the Music Moves Europe Awards (MMEA). The talented singer-songwriter was also named ‘Newcomer of the Year’ at the European Festival Awards 2016 and won the converted EBBA Public Choice Award which was voted for by fans in 2017.
Dukagjin Lipa is CEO of London-based Mercy & Wild PR and Communications Agency, as well as executive director of Republika Communications, a creative communications agency in his native Kosovo. Dugi is also the founder of the Sunny Hill Festival and the co-founder of Sunny Hill Foundation with his daughter and foundations patron Dua Lipa.