Article by Mihaela Vețan, CRIES, Romania

Within the COOPTERR project, CRIES organized the 6th training session from 24 to 27 September, in Timisoara, Romania. More than 20 people were involved by the partners and came from France, Italy, Portugal, Hungary, and Luxembourg to participate.

The main theme of the training was “ Sustainable cultural events”, the participants had the opportunity to participate in some activities from LA PAS/Slowing Down Festival, organized by CRIES during this period, in the program of the European Capital of Culture, Timișoara 2023.

The main objectives of this mobility were:

    • To increase the capacity of participants to learn from other people, from different areas of activities, and from different cultural & geographical contexts (multidisciplinary approach);
    • To promote sustainability as a transversal objective, including for cultural events;
    • To increase the capacity of participants to evaluate a cultural event, using a multidisciplinary list of indicators;
    • To facilitate the problematization regarding the specificity elements from Romania / Eastern Europe versus Western Europe;
    • To facilitate the correlations among Romanian initiatives and other initiatives already presented in the previous mobilities (to understand the similarities and differences).

Participation in the Festival was a learning activity for the participants: they had specific tasks to achieve during the festival and some partners from the COOPTERR consortium involved artists from their countries who were invited as guests and included in the LA PAS program. This was an important added value of the cooperation in this project.

Once arrived at the festival, the team had one task. To go mingle with the audience and the artisans at the local festival, to find out certain information from them. This would help them evaluate the key ideas in the festival and collect them for the Feedback Report.

One of the nicest moments was to include Albino Bingamini from Solidarius Italy in the program of the Festival. He prepared an open circle with anyone who wants to join, in singing an adapted version of the Romanian folklore song “Paparude” – a song to invoke the rain, for the growth of crops (putting in evidence a diversity of old songs related to work, which are currently endangered). The relationship with the local people and with the artisans was facilitated by a group of volunteers, which helped COOPTERR members with the translation.

Some impressions, here : https://youtu.be/4-y6bAKuFLA

The program of this mobility included also study visits to different local initiatives, involved in the social economy sector (RECIPROC, ASAT), creative & cultural sector (Ambasada, Museum of Communist consumer), and youth sector (Timiș Youth Foundation).

Also, it was organized a discussion about Timișoara-European Capital of Culture 2023, with the focus on how we address the participatory and inclusive dimensions in the projects included in the program of European Capital of Culture 2023. The main guests were from the Timișoara Municipality Centre for projects, Basca Independent Theatre, Timiș Youth Foundation and CivicCultura project.

The mobility also facilitated the starting point to work on a common Manifesto on SSE, Culture and territorial cooperation.

We remind you that the COOPTERR project is a European project financed by the Erasmus+ program, which involves the following organizations: CRIES (Romania), Fekete Sereg (Hungary), Largo Residencias (Portugal), RIPESS Europe, Solidarius Italia and UFISC (France).