From August 19 to 31, 2 one-week sessions of the summer plein air arts were held in the European Cultural Youth House of the Art Movement Circle in the village of Dazhdovnitsa, commune. Kardzhali, which is an international center for cultural programs and creative residencies, offering young artists from all over the world the opportunity to work on their projects “in situ”, in non-standard open spaces and in an authentic and ethnically specific environment. Dazhdovnica is a small mountain village with 150 ethnic Turks. 30 children and youth with their mentors from the art workshops in Botevgrad, the village of Mirkovo, Dolna Banya and Kardjali participated in the summer event, rich in emotions, ideas, forms of overcoming layered negative stereotypes and forming interdisciplinary cultural skills. The work in each of the plein air sessions (first session “Notes, Palette and Street Art” and second session “Stories with Dance and Wood”) was planned and executed according to the specific nature of the participating workshops (“Music and Traditions” / “Visual arts and street art’ and ‘Inspirational dances’ / ‘Applied arts: wood carving’) on the one hand, and the orientation towards a new kind of creative, performance, presentation and communication skills provided through modules such as ‘Challenges of art’ (short lecture) , “Art and Entrepreneurship” (short lecture), “Street Art Against Hate Speech” (presentation), “Art Strategies for Social Inclusion” (short lecture), “7 Keys to Win Your Audience” (brochure) and “11 Extraordinary Tools (brochure) prepared as presentation files and as printed brochures.
Through a series of practical activities and specific team building, such as “I am Zhivko”, in which everyone learned to publicly present the character, skills and motivation for development of another participant randomly selected on a game basis, as well as to answer frankly questions from the audience about their strengths and weaknesses, aspirations and difficulties, an atmosphere of cooperation and trust was built.
During the program of each session, a video discussion was broadcast with the art director of the Norwegian partner organization Kutin Konsert Forening (KKF) – Kiril Kutin, in the framework of which he talks about his success as a creator and performer, about the problems of young talents, incl. and from ethnic minorities, and what solutions and strategies exist and can be implemented. The 30-minute video was in Bulgarian. ez. in the seminar hall at various times of the day, incl. and during breaks to inspire and motivate participants with stories about the path to success in the field of culture and art.
The summer plein air turned out to be a really exciting event for the children and young people who took part in it, through the provided opportunity to work in a new type of teams with different training, through working with mixed techniques from the 4 arts presented at the art workshops in places and accordingly – through public presentations of creative products to all participants as well as to the local population.
The assistant during the first session was the musician from Sofia Ivayla Tsacheva, and during the second – 17-year-old Harika Ibryamova from Kardzhali, winner of 96 awards for literature, music, illustration and advertising, debate competitions, amateur theater, summer residential programs , ethnocultural studies. This provided an additional contribution to the motivation for performance and cooperation of all participants.