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Description
What do you think about me? - Friendship through the arts is a project focused on the main aspects of integration through the arts - theater, music, dance. Through this project we are opening the gates for new audiences for complex stage performances based on diverse ethnic cultural heritage. It gives young people aged 13 to 17 years the opportunity to touch the culture and traditions of diverse ethnicities. In a joint initiative with local community centers and schools, through meetings and conversations in a family environment, young people will explore fairytales, legends, rituals of the communities. Under the guidance of specialists, they will process the collected material. A 20 minutes documentary about the research process will be created. It will offer an innovative portfolio with remarkable examples of the cultural heritage of ethnic groups. The best collected stories will be used for the script of a multi-layered stage product, intertwining theater, music and dance. The performance will reach the audience with diverse ethnic origin in four small settlements, outside municipal centers and one municipality with mixed ethnic population through traveling performances. Representatives of ethnic groups will be involved as active participants - both as young artists and as an audience. Target groups and active participants in the events will be 65 people - 8 artists, 27 children - participants in the show and 30 children from local ethnic communities. At the final stage, a final performance with a culinary and ethnographic exhibition will be organized. The five traveling performances and the final performance will attract about 1000 spectators. The project includes activities for creating a Strategy for attracting new audiences, a mentors'' FRIENDSHIP program for parents and children in overcoming differences through art, Program for training in specific skills of the team of Harlequin experts, cultural calendars of the partners as a tool for sustainability.
Summary of project results
The project aimed at creating opportunities for discovering art of different ethnic groups and making a multi-layered stage product by intertwining theater, music and dance. The specific objectives included to study and preserve ethnic cultural heritage by preserving the original traditions, legends and rituals as part of the European values, to attract the public interest in the cultural heritage of ethnic minorities, and to revitalise the cultural life in small settlements with limited access to cultural events.
This project gave young people aged 13 to 17 years the opportunity to touch the culture and traditions of diverse ethnicities. In a joint initiative with local community centers and schools, under the guidance of specialists, through meetings and conversations in a family environment, young people explored fairytales, legends, and rituals of the communities. The collected material served as the basis of a script for a multi-layered stage product combining theater, music and dance. A 20-minute documentary about the research process was also created. At the final stage, a final performance with a culinary and ethnographic exhibition was organized as well as five traveling performances. Five youth ethnographic workshops were organized, held during the tours of the stage show in 5 settlements - the village of Kamenar, the village of Kazashko, the town of Suvorovo, the town of Ignatievo and the village of Pet Mogili. At these events, older representatives of the ethnic groups showed the youth how to decorate and make traditional clothes, jewelry, accessories, how to prepare traditional dishes (typical for the ethnic group - Cossacks, Roma, Turks). The most successful examples were presented at the culinary and ethnographic exhibition during the final event in the Vladislav Varnenchik district in the city of Varna.
The most significant outcome of the project was the achieved mutual understanding of the different ethnicities through the arts. The project achieved to raise awareness of the heritage of minorities and to encourage those communities to actively participate in cultural initiatives.
Summary of bilateral results
The cooperation with experts from the Norwegian organization Assitej Norway has greatly enriched the beneficiary''s team, which, as a result of the exchange and joint work, has increased its skills in attracting new audiences when conducting stage events, and improved its professional experience in stimulating teacher-creator-parent-child relationships.