Enrich the quality of life in Bulgarian villages

Hello, dear Baba and Bulgarian villages supporter!

I am using the chance to contact you briefly to remind you that we have 3 days to use GlobalGiving's Little by little campaign to make 6 creative spaces in 6 villages become reality!

As you've hopefully read in the last letter, we will launch 6 artistic residences in the villages Deleyna and Sinagovtsi (Vidin), Pavolche and Tsarvets (Vratsa) and Oslen Krivodol and Lik (Mezdra). But before the residencies themselves, we have another key activity in each of these villages.

The project includes repairment work of a creative space in each of the 6 chitalishte so that they can attract artists, diverse experts and be used by local people for different creative and cultural activities and get-togethers!

You can find out more about it HERE 

and support the reconstruction of these spaces HERE.

Thank you for being around,

Yoana and the IF team

Links:

• https://www.facebook.com/events/241077368297402/?active_tab=discussion

Hello, dear Baba supporter!

How has your almost spring been going? Do you have a more nature-filled place to rest and take care of?

As you've hopefully read in the last letter, we will launch 6 artistic residences in the villages Deleyna and Sinagovtsi (Vidin), Pavolche and Tsarvets (Vratsa) and Oslen Krivodol and Lik (Mezdra). But before the residencies themselves, we have another key activity in each of these villages.

The project includes repairment work of a creative space in each of the 6 chitalishte so that they can attract artists and be used by local people for different creative and cultural activities and get-togethers!

They are partly funded by the so called Norwegian fund operated by the Ministry of culture of Bulgaria, but we will need some additional support since the project money are simply not enough because of the inflation!

And GlobalGiving provides with this rare chance once again - we truly have the chance with the support of many of us to make these repairments the best way possible!

APRIL LITTLE BY LITTLE CAMPAIGN coming - 3 - 7 APRIL

Do you wanna support directly and concretely the repairment works of the 6 public cultural places that we've started? You can do so by donation not more than 50$ (100 lv.) between 3rd and 7th of APRIL on our project page, which you already know well. GlobalGiving will match these donation with 50% more.

We have also the support of the Bulgarian youth street wear brand / hrabar of Chris Zahariev and Chris Makarov, who donate 10% of their income for the repairment of cultural spaces in the villages Deleyna and Sinagovtsi!

What's the shortest way we could explain the meaning of all these efforts - to meet urban people and resources with rural communities? To create spaces for local creativity and artists to come to these villages?

Access to culture and its improvement, combined with the newly established human connections between urban youth and rural elderly are the shortcut to a better mental health, related to the loneliness some elderly people experience in villages, and the overall well-being and quality of life in these settlements.
Okay... it wasn't so short. Sorry :)

But it is truthful.

Thank you, thank you, thank you once more for being around!

Yours,

Yoana and the Ideas Factory team

Hello, dear Baba supporter and village-lover! :)

How are you feeling with the emergence of winter in the air and in your home?

We've just had our last prewinter volunteer action in 2 villages in Northwestern Bulgaria - Oslen Krivodol and Lik (both in Mezdra municipality). Their mission was WATER - cleaning 2 main springs, on which the local water supply depends. You can find out a bit more HERE. 10 volunteers joined for the cleaning itself, but the initiative included also mapping of all the local springs, research with a hydrologist on their ingredients and quality and the creation of a short handbook on how to preserve and revitalize local water resources. We will share it in the beginning of next year!

This week we also had a lovely meeting with 6 mayors and representatives of 6 village chitalishte (socio-cultural hubs) in Northwestern Bulgaria - in the municipalities of Vidin and Vratsa. The occasion?

Next year we will launch 6 artistic residences in those villages - Deleyna and Sinagovtsi (Vidin), Pavolche and Gorno Peshtene (Vratsa) and Oslen Krivodol and Lik (Mezdra). That's right. They are partly funded by the so called Norwegian fund operated by the Ministry of culture of Bulgaria, but we will need some additional support since the project includes repairment work of a creative space in each of the 6 chitalishte!

If you want to support our efforts for those 6 villages next year - there's a great opportunity to do it TODAY - 29th of November! Today it is the annual GivingTuesday, when GlobalGiving matches every single donation from a huge fund it gathered - every singe donation counts much more than its amount today!

PLEASE, do support us today so we could bring better access to culture and stronger intergenerational relations for the local communities. And not least importantly - to fully finance the repairment works of the chitalishtes spaces so that they could become PERMANENT SPACES FOR CREATIVITY for local and traveling artisits. 

For the repairment of these spaces we plan to buy paint, glue and other painting materialis and the labour of people, of course. We plan to buy for each space a set of wallstack, which can be creatively reorganized for different purposes (see the photos).

Please, contact us if you have some ideas or would like to know more about our upcoming processes!

Thank you, thank you, thank you for being around for so long,

Yours, 

Yoana and the Ideas Factory team

Hello, dear Baba supporter! 

How are you dealing with the end of summer and where did it bring you?

Our team had a little time off in August and them quickly merged into the wave of urgencies, related to the flooded Bulgarian villages around Karlovo, which you probably've heard of and most prorbably already contributed with some help.

Karavelovo village was one of the villages which hosted our 1-month Baba Residence in 2018. 4 of our residents lived there and made lasting friendships with local people. 2 of these people - Kristina and Yana - are the ones most fiercely coordinating donations and volunteer support in the village. That's right - Baba Residence has such long-lasting solidariy consequences, which are sometimes hard to grasp in the short-term.

While Yana and Krisi are coordinating some of the support, coming to Karavelovo, we turned our workspace in Sofia into a donation spot. Together with volunteers we gathered and sorted most urgent neccesities, which people brought to us. We've already sent 3 cars and one bus with donations to the village. The latter was with the unpaid support of the carrier EKONT.

We're still in the rush of it all and truly thankful to all the numerous volunteers. In the mean time this weekend part of our team coorganized a small grass-roots intergenerational festival in the village of Oslen Krivodol. We did the most favourite autumn rite of making lyutenitsa with a huge group of people from different generations. Besides that, we contributed with a lecture on the preservence of local springs and a cyanotypical exhibition, a result from Baba Residence in 2020.

If you want to support our efforts for the flooded village of Karavelovo, you can do it here at our project here as well. But being there and talking and meeting people, while cleaning some dirt, is the most precious effort we could give at this moment.

Yours, 

Ideas Factory team

Hello, dear Baba-supporter and village-lover :)

I tried to write this letter in Bulgarian this time, but it seems that the website cannot recognize Cyrillic alphabet. (Pishi mi, ako iskash da ti izpratq pismoto na bylgarski). I hope spring has explicitly sprung around you, wherever you are right now, and you create and have conditions for peace and joy around you!

So: I HAVE 3 IMPORTANT NEWS FROM OUR VILLAGES:

We chose the village for our next 3-week Baba Residency! In other words, this village will host a 3-week long artistic residency, which will unfold around topics related to climate changes and how they affect the agricultural and cultural dimenstion of life in this village and the region (we call it Climartistique humourosly). For the first time ever we have the time and support of 7 Europen organisations, as part of the project Tandem Regions, whose advices and observations will aim the development of this residency as a prototype for an initiative, contributing to the enhancement of the acces to culture in villages. The residency itself will take place in June 2022 in the village Gorno Peshtene (Yes, again around the dearerst Vratsa!).

From the middle of APRIL we start our rural volunteer actions S ryce za selo / Hands-on a village, which I told about in previous letters. What's new about them is that we will fundraise for them this year here and will make our best to offer them also as an experience to refugee families from Ukraine, staying in Bulgaria. We believe that for them (as for all of us) the opportunity to meet local people in villages, to engage in some consuming and mindful activity and spend some time in nature can be a grounding experience. We will release the application form for the volunteer action on 7th of April, but some of the village which will be part of it, are Ryzhevo Konare and the Northewestern Salsh, Sinyo bardo and Oslen Krivodol.

The first GlobalGiving campaign Little by little start this year on 4th of APRIL until 8th of APRIL! 

Our request to you is that, if you still feel drawn to our mission, to share the link of our project with at least three of your village-loving friends, which you know care about the quality of life in villages, or/ and to support the campaign with a donation of up to 50 dollars/ 100 leva  from 4th until 8th of April. All donations up to 50 dollars/ 100 lv will be matched with 50% by GlobalGiving :). If you have some other brave and heartful ideas how  to make this campaign better, I'm open to it! Thanks!

As a mentioned, the focus of this fundraising moment is our S ryce za selo village voluneer calendar. Until now, our team, together with volunteers and active local village people, has been coordinating it voluntarily.

The resources we will fundraise, we plan to put into:

organizing the meals of the volunteers, which donate their time and focused efforts to solving (and beautifyling) some practical issues, shared by local villagers (such as repainting of public facilitiues, parks and buildings; cleaning river shores, park and other natural areas; rearranging cultural centers, libraries and ethnographic collections etc): These funds will be given to local elderly who wish to prepare the meals for the volunteers and sit and share them together.

covering travel costs for volunteers and team, also meaning that will put effort into offering these volunteering actions as a family experience absolutely cost-free for refugee families from Ukraine, which are residing in Bulgaria.

These are our goals, briefly.

/ I also share a link with our vividly illustraded 2021, created by the painter Aleksandra Nikolova/ al nik. Here you can find some of the achievements of our volunteer actions in numbers and good deeds.  

Thank you for reading

and I hope to receive a feedback from what we've shared

here or at communicate@ideasfactorybg.org,

Yoana and the Ideas Factory team