NEWS
September 2009
BIVEDA takes part in a new project in Bulgaria
"Be gentle with the Earth - let’s save the Water"
In the project „Be gentle with the Earth - let’s save the Water” young people from Iceland, Portugal, Hungary, Poland and Bulgaria, and their leaders, shared through artistic expression knowledge and impulses, connected to the preservation of the environment and, more specific - of the water.
2009 is the European year of the Science, which has presented the splendid opportunity to discuss and collide the different viewpoints on the subject, using artistic means.
The participants have acquired deeper understanding for the Other, working together with their fellows, representing different cultures. Together, they experienced a week at the Bulgarian seaside and took part in different ateliers – Music, Dance, Theatre and Media. The process had its end in a joyful performance, through which the young people shared their new knowledge with the local community. Through the performance they provoked the citizens to talk about the preservation of the environment, about taking care for the nature and the water, as the most valuable resource of the future.
August 2009
BIVEDA takes part in a new project in Denmark
August 2009
BIVEDA takes part in the annual meeting of the European Network of the Second Chance Schools in Portugal
Trainers from BIVEDA took part in the annual meeting of the European Network of the Second Chance Schools, which took place in Matosinhos, Portugal 25-30.08.2009, hosted by the local Escola de Secunda Oportunidade. The meeting took the form of a Youth Event - artistic workshops (theatre, manga drawing, dance, graffiti drawing, pinhole photography and others) and a big final concert on the beach. The young people and their teachers were from second chance schools in Germany, Denmark, Poland, Portugal, Sweden, and Spain.
May 2009
BIVEDA takes part in a new project in Portugal
March 2009
BIVEDA co-founds a new network - "International Network for Awarness, Creative Ctizenship and Transformation", Walse
The new network was unofficially launched in Llandudno, North Wales, during the seminar "Art Included", 16-22.03.2003 (with BIVEDA as co-founder), under the name INFACCT ("International Network for Awarness, Creative Ctizenship and Transformation" ). The official document was signed on the 29-th of June in Porto. Among the objectives of the network are: using participative arts as tool for creative citizenship; promoting communication and build social connections; strengthening multicultural relations; sharing and spreading (new) creative methods, good practices in the field of participative arts, social and educational work, etc.
February 2009
BIVEDA takes part in a training-seminar in Portugal
"Take a chance into the labyrinth"
Between 24.02 and 01.03.2009 BIVEDA took part in the "Take a chance into the labyrinth" training-seminar which took part in Matosinhos and the village of Piodao, Portugal. Besides training in the sensory labyrinth theatre techniques, leading to two labyrinth performances in the unique atmosphere of the old and stony mountain village, this was a preliminary meeting for the foundation of a European network of organizations related to the social dimensions of arts.
November 2008
BIVEDA takes part in a new project in Poland
"Europe - let's meet through art"
The "Europe - let's meet through art" project is a youth exchange which gathers very young people from four European countries: Poland, Finland, Portugal and Bulgaria.
The groups will be 7 people +leaders in age from 14 to 17 years old.
The aim of the project is to help young people to know different cultures and habits through art and many different non-formal educative activities. The youngsters will also have possibility to express themselves thanks to making all together a performance.
The project is for young people who are very keen on cooperating with friends from four different parts of Europe and who are interested in art. All activities and games are prepared by the youngest participants of the project from all countries. Everyone will have a possibility to give their impact into the project. This exchange also provides activities which will have a great impact on European dimension. Moreover the project's aim is also to overcome all stereotypes and barriers.
Through the performance young people want to prove that cultural or language barriers are not a problem, when people have passion and interest which they want to share with others
October 2008
BIVEDA takes part in a new project in Hungary
"In Between" - Sensory Labyrinth Theatre
The program is supported by the Mobilitas National Youth Service - Youth in Action Programme Office and by the National Cultural Fund (since our programme enters into the Pécs - European Capital of Culture programmes).
The exchange programme will take place in the Sculpture Park on Szársomlyó hill, Villány from 29th September to the 11th of October (including two days for travel).
Participants from Wales, Portugal, Iceland, Bulgaria, Hungary.
September 2008
BIVEDABIVEDA takes part in a new project in Italy
"Ariadne's thread", Training in Milan, 22.09 - 28.09.2008
Bistra Choleva, the Artistic Director of BIVEDA, worked as an assistant to the director Iwan Brioc (Cynefin) during the "Ariadne's thread" training.
BIVEDA was a partner to the Italian host organization "Associazione Culturale Arci Varieazioni" in a one-week international training in Milan, between 22nd and 29th September 2008.
Context Oriented Intercultural Applied Participative Arts (COIAPA) are an innovative way of working interculturally with the arts to bring about mindfulness. Mindfulness is when we intentionally bring our awareness to the present moment and in sharing that moment in space and time together discover a sense of unity with humanity and with all of life.
This work has been found to be beneficial to building strong learning relationships between young people who are disadvantaged through disability or learning difficulties and workers.
The emphasis in the training is on implicational meaning rather than propositional meaning (the former being the intuitive feeling based ‘knowing’ directly linked to emotion and body sensations, and the latter the product of intellect and reasoning).
The training will introduce some of the COIAPA methods to Cultural Youth Workers and encourage dialpogue about it’s application in the articipants own organizations.
The target group of the project are Cultural Youth Workers who:
1. Work with young people with learning difficulties and/or disabilities
2. Work in an intercultural context through the arts
The training will result in a Sensory Labyrinth Theatre performance!
August 2008 - July 2010
BIVEDA is a partner in a new long term project with a kickoff meeting in Romania
"MEDIALOGUES", Period - 01.08.2008 - 31.07.2010
One of the characteristics of the media and communications is that new technologies do not actually replace older ones, but they all complement each other in some newer, more complex ways - TV has not replaced the book, just as the book did not replace previous forms of storytelling. Following a similar trend, the new digital media have not displaced the 'classic' media, and the current context is one of convergence. However, since the new wave of technologies facilitates not only a genuine trans-media intertextuality, but also generates increased integration and interactivity, the new cultural forms are seen to generate a profound 'digital generation gap'. In this new context, inter-generational and family learning are seen to continuously switch roles.
"MEDIALOGUES" KICK-OFF PROJECT MEETING - BUCHAREST, RUMANIA, 3-5.12.2008
- 03.12.08 - Presentations of partners and partner institutions, brief presentation of the project
- 04.12.08 - Presentation of key concepts (literacy, new literacies, digital natives, immigrants and asylum-seekers) and loose discussions on them, methodology proposal, provisional distribution of tasks and discussion of project timeline, establishment of date and location of the second meeting
- 05.12.08 - Administrative issues: activities, mobilities, reporting
June - August 2008
A new project by BIVEDA has been approved:
„The wonder of the other - From Foreign Rituals to Familiar Habits and back!”, Sensory Labyrinth Theatre, Sofia, Bulgaria .
The project is supported by the European Cultural Foundation and is made in cooperation with the Wales theatre company Cynefin and NGO RAFT, Belgrad, Serbia.
This project aims to celebrate the multi-ethnic diversity of the European periphery through the development and performance of an international Sensory Labyrinth Theatre production in an urban ghetto in Sofia, Bulgaria.
Inspired by the work of Theatre Anthropologist Enrique Vargas, Sensory Labyrinth Theatre is a participative arts process that leads to the creation of a sight specific instillation performance. Audiences enter the instillation alone and journey on a winding path along which they encounter 'sensory portals.' These portals are co-created with community volunteers through research methods the company Cynefin have developed. In the dark spaces of the Labyrinth these encounters help intensify the travellers' senses and awaken in them a renewed appreciation of the kind of aliveness remembered from childhood.
There is not a community or organization that does not benefit from participating in Sensory Labyrinth Theatre. People report greater confidence, clarity, joy, peace and aspiration, but even more than this is a feeling of having touched something deep inside of themselves, something sustaining which was always there but hidden by the day to day debris of modern day stresses. Reacquainting with this inner strength creates a strong and sometimes unspoken bond between people. To have had the privilege to give this experience to others is a profound force of bonding for the communities who have co-created the event and engenders a feeling of boundless capacity.
The project addresses two related issues. The first is that modern globalized society has forgotten that some very familiar daily phenomenon have their origins in distant cultures. Things we use in our daily lives have often been adopted, integrated or plundered from cultures very different to our own, e.g. silk and matches from China, maize and tobacco from Latin America, to name a few. At the same time, in daily life, being Chinese or Latino or simply from a different culture can become an obstacle to acceptance. Therefore, the basic idea of the project is to remind us of the roots of objects, materials and practices which we use daily yet to which little thought and respect is given to the creativity, skill or context of the 'other', which created them: whilst much energy is often employed in resisting the 'otherness' of others.
The second related issue addressed in this project is the difference often neglected between the term "ritual" and "habit". In our time-poor world we rarely reflect upon our or our group's identity. We adopt foreign objects, take them out of their cultural context and turn them into mere commodity, overlooking the sacred ritual of their production and usage that promotes cohesiveness for the culture of origin. This process of de-ritualization is a cause of the fragmentation of society, another effect of which is the insensitivity to our habitat's destruction. What is needed to start to undo these effects is a purposeful intention to reflect, a return from habituation to ritualization, from consumption to sharing.
The project will reinvent the ritualistic relationship with the earth's resources and human inspiration in a modern secular context: not only talking about these things, but inter-acting differently with them through a practice of reflection in action. Sensory Labyrinth Theatre is the ideal container for rehearsing this revivification of our relationship with what was once foreign but which has now become familiar.
Program:
| Date | Morning | Evening |
| 09.09 | - | Yes, open for visitors between 19 and 22 h. |
| 10.09 | Yes, open for visitors between 14 and 17 h. | Yes, open for visitors between 19 and 22 h. |
| 12.09 | Yes, open for visitors between 14 and 17 h. | Yes, open for visitors between 19 and 22 h. |
| 13.09 | Yes, open for visitors between 14 and 17 h. | Yes, open for visitors between 19 and 22 h. |
| 14.09 | Yes, open for visitors between 14 and 17 h. | Yes, open for visitors between 19 and 22 h. |
| 15.09 | Yes, open for visitors between 14 and 17 h. | Yes, open for visitors between 19 and 22 h. |
| 16.09 | Yes, open for visitors between 14 and 17 h. | Yes, open for visitors between 19 and 22 h. |
| 18.09 | Yes, open for visitors between 14 and 17 h. | Yes, open for visitors between 19 and 22 h. |
| 19.09 | Yes, open for visitors between 14 and 17 h. | Yes, open for visitors between 19 and 22 h. |
| 20.09 | Yes, open for visitors between 14 and 17 h. | Yes, open for visitors between 19 and 22 h. |
| 21.09 | Yes, open for visitors between 14 and 17 h. | - |
Location:
The building of the chitalishte in Knjajevo - we want to give voice and attract the attention of the local community.
With the financial support of:
Lead applicant:
BIVEDA, Sofia, Bulgaria
Director:
Cynefin, Wales, UK
Partners:
NGO RAFT, Belgrad, Serbia
With the support of:
Slug Theatre, New Bulgarian University, Sofia
April - May 2008
BIVEDA was a partner organization in a new project in Portugal
BIVEDA was a partner organization in the youth exchange project “Arts and Dreams -3” which took place in Espinho, Portugal from 25.04 to 02.05.2008. Two trainers, a group leader and six young people (age 15 to 20) joined young people and trainers from Poland, Portugal, Hungary and the UK and worked together in artistic workshops (dance, puppetry, music, street art and video art) to create a colourful pageant show and an open air performance which took place in Matusinhos, near Porto, in front of an enthusiastic local audience. The motto of the show was “Bring your dreams, spread your wings!”.
The event coincided with the signing of the contract for the opening of a second chance school in Matusinhos, initiated by the hosting Portuguese organization. The school will be attended by highschool drop-outs who will be given the chance to attend vocational training courses, and is the first of the kind in Portugal. The national groups attended the signing ceremony in the city hall and did a small performance there too.