“The Craft Enters the Neighbourhood” is a series of meetings of prominent Bulgarian artists of applied arts with groups of young people of different ethnicities at the Nikola Y. Vaptsarov Secondary School in Plovdiv. Professionals gave personal example, knowledge and experience “from the kitchen” of their respective creative industries.
The workshops had a strong practical orientation. We held a total of six with 20 young people each, in which the artists introduced themselves and their work and together with the children they created various objects and works with style-specific techniques. We emphasized on the mixing of youths from different ethnicities in a collective creative environment.
The project created an opportunity for joint work between young Bulgarian and Roma children, and this will helped the groups get to know each other better. Subsequently, we held a charity sale in the “Trakart” center selling the children’s works created throughout the workshops, thus presenting their talent in the very center of Plovdiv. Funds from the bazaar were used to fund a series of expert-led visits to fine-art galleries in Plovdiv for the children. A special freely distributed booklet followed, which was distributed throughout Bulgaria, providing a short overview of the event with pictures of the children and their works, as well as interviews with them about the way they see the world at their age.
The project was part of the program of “Plovdiv – European Capital of Culture 2019”.