Category Archives: SURREAL FREEDOM

Workshops for Traditional Carpet-Making, Rituals and Traditional Music, Crafts and Arts in Chiprovtsi, Bulgaria, at the Spring University ‘Europe on the Go’ 2014

1. Visit to the Petar Parchevich School: Workshop with students and teacehras, carpet weaving workshop, the garden for natural dyes: Yulia Ignatova and Nikola Nikolov.

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2. Folk customs, handicrafts, carpet weaving’: Yulia IGNATOVA, master carpet maker.

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3. Workshop Touch Bulgarian Rythm and Drum Spring University Europe on the Go Chiprovtsi 2014 – Rozko ZAMFIROV

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4. Workshop: Visit to the Community Centre, meeting with the CHAR Association, presentation of local folklore: dance, music, traditional instruments.

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The region of Chiprovtsi and Western Stara Planina has often been labelled as the poorest one in the European Union. At the same time, it is one of the richest in ancient nature, history and culture in all of Europe. Chiprovtsi is unique in that its link between past and future has never been broken over the millennia. It gives us an opportunity to recall who we are and ask where we are headed. The site from where we human beings once entered Europe is also a site where we may look for an answer: which way now? And we may find this answer: in the air of sensitivity and mysterious depth that permeates everything; in the old houses and pristine mountains with their spirit that captures the ancient symbols, still alive in the tradition of Chiprovtsi carpet-making and the ancient local rites: the immaterial treasures that we can discover, not by digging the earth, but by looking around ourselves with enlightened eyes and minds. The pristine state of the Chiprovtsi Municipality is a unique opportunity for developing the entire region in a sustainable way, towards our common future on planet Earth.

Traditional Rituals and Traditional Music, Crafts and Arts in Chiprovtsi, Bulgaria and Student’s Arts and Songs, at the Spring University ‘Europe on the Go’ 2014

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1. Workshop Touch Bulgarian Rythm and Drum Spring University Europe on the Go Chiprovtsi 2014 – Rozko ZAMFIROV

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2. Workshop: Visit to the Community Centre, meeting with the CHAR Association, presentation of local folklore: dance, music, traditional instruments.

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… And the … partcipants at the Spring University ‘Europe on the Go’ – … dancing … and …acting … and … singing:

Yulia IGNATOVA – Workshops for Traditional Carpet-Making, Rituals and Traditional Music, Crafts and Arts in Chiprovtsi, Bulgaria, at the Spring University ‘Europe on the Go’ 2014

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1. Folk customs, handicrafts, carpet weaving’: Yulia IGNATOVA, master carpet maker.

2. Visit to the Petar Parchevich School: Workshop with students and teacehras, carpet weaving workshop, the garden for natural dyes: Yulia Ignatova and Nikola Nikolov.

Petar Kanev – A Place for the Future? or Despite the Slops

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‘The problems of the world cannot possibly be solved by skeptics or cynics whose horizons are limited by the obvious realities. We need men who can dream of things that never were!’

John F. Kennedy

Petar Kanev

PLACE WITHOUT FUTURE?

I don’t know how to name, what happens with everything alive- souls, people, animals, nature- nowadays, here in Bulgaria, especially on the Black Sea coast. Chalga-Pop folk music, kitsch, ignorance, criminality, corruption – these words are weak, trite and insufficient to describe the disgusting reality we are sinking in. I think the most accurate metaphor is slops.

The slops gradually flood everything and everyone – words, people, Medias, towns, seas, and mountains. The least we can do is to state freely and clearly, that we do not want it! And this won’t be a little act, if we do it all the possible ways, by all the possible means – however and whenever everyone can, but what is most important – uninterruptedly and constantly, really all of us. I will start with a small act against the slops – something inmost. It is also a dedication to all the people, who made something despite the despair, the misery, the tiredness, the personal obligations, and the problems, and despite the slops.I wrote this text in the heat of the campaign „Save Irakli” in summer 2006. Since then my pessimism and despair become paler with every little thing against the slops, I do daily. This is the result, when someone makes something little every day, and in the little things originates a community of people, a common spirit, a common mood, a moving from one place to another…

PLACE FOR FUTURE

Not a dream, not a project, not a Utopia. A real existing place, where a lot of little revolutions happen… They start inside you, inside your head, inside your body, and your mind – and they come outside you, for example, because you are not alone, and ferry from one to another like a chain reaction, like the energy through the neurons.

When, a few years ago, the coincidence of circumstances throw me in a concrete problem, several consecutive lightening flashed across my mind:

It is not possible a nightmare like this to happen!

It is not possible such dedicated, worthy people to exist nowadays! Why I haven’t heard of them?

It is impossible these people to be so many! I have never imagined they exist, and they have been around us all the time! They are not seen in the Medias, nobody knows about them, who could imagine there exists a civil movement in our country?

How will I look upon myself, if I do not support these people somehow?

We are not alone!

Oh, what can happen! There is a magic, a good sorcery, the wonder is with us!

This movement is like the life, once entered it, the only way back is a suicide…

In a few years the PLACE FOR FUTURE sprouted and grew up. It needs a lot of cares, and we will probably not see the product of it. The care of it- this is the gift we get. And we need the place for future, because it can happen even on a place without future. And if the solidarity, active civil position, social connection among people are still a forgotten memory from the distant past for us, I think this can change, as we start from the beginning like pioneers, today- not tomorrow, here- not anywhere else. A lot of little daily examples, sustainable and constant, create the real communities of people, society, culture, politics, and development. Do they still make sense? Only they make sense. The sense of the mantra of sustainable development.

Everything started from the emotions and in their shock new horizons gradually spread out – the necessity of more common sense, more awareness, and more light. And the place where this can happen is the place where people learn and develop. A place where future sprouts is the education. What will this future be depends on each of us.

We often hear that every effort is useless, except from the effort to regularize your own life at the expense of the others, that there are no common values, but only objective occurrences. One common value however is inside us – the preservation of life. To defeat life means to be dead.

I am happy we have succeeded so far, and I can repeat my one-time words.

I dedicate this project to all the people, who made something despite the despair, the misery, the tiredness, the personal obligations, and the problems, and despite the slops.

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Dr. Petar Kanev – The Global Criminalization as a Local Problem

Radosveta Krastanova

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Radosveta Krastanova is an assistant professor at the New Bulgarian University. She teaches environmental policy and sustainable development to bachelor and master program students at the Departments of Political Science and Economics and Business Administration. Since 2008, she has been working on her doctoral thesis concerning civic participation in the Green Movement in Bulgaria within the framework of a joint doctoral program between the New Bulgarian University and the University of Burgundy, Dijon, France.

Radosveta Krastanova specialized at the University of Nottingham in the United Kingdom (2008), and at the University of Burgundy (2006, 2012). She is member of the research team with the House of the Humanities (La Maison des Sciences de l’Homme de Dijon) in Dijon, France which studies the behavior and attitudes of citizens to the environmental problems and policies. She has a number of publications in Bulgarian, French and English on the new forms of citizen and political mobilization in modern democracies, especially on the “New green wave” in Bulgaria, underlying the motivation of the civic participation in environmental issues. She is co-author and editor (together with Peter Kanev) of the collection entitled “A Place for the Future. Year One.”, Sofia, Sofia Civic Association – “Shtastlivetsa”, 2009 containing articles and studies of researchers, experts, journalists, and students on topical subjects connected with ecology, environmentalism, sustainable development, civic participation and citizen empowerment.

At the same time, Radosveta is Chairperson of the Sofia Civic Association – “Shtastlivetsa”, a member of the civic coalition set up for the resolution of the solid waste disposal crisis in Sofia (2005 – 2006), and an active member of the National Environmental Coalition “For the Nature” from its inception in 2006 to the present day. Over the last three years, this “Shtastlivetsa” Association has been establishing contacts and organizing interaction events among various civic society actors ( the academic community, the NGO sector, the business community, and the local authorities), and has been promoting the introduction of sustainable development as both an academic discipline and student practice on the level of university education, in the framework of the educational network PLACE FOR FUTURE

Radosveta Krestanova – International coordinator for ‘Place for Future’ Interdisciplinary Education Network

Civic activity: Chairperson of the Board of Shtastlivetsa Sofia Civic Association

Civic experience: Coalition “Zero Waste” Coalition “For the Nature”

Occupation: lecturer, department Political Science in French language, New Bulgarian University (NBU)

Academic qualifications: Master of French Philology, specialization – translation; Assistant in French Language for Political Scientists; PhD student in Political Science at NBU and the University of Burgundy at Dijon, France

Professional and non-professional experience: Studio for Feature Films “Vreme”, Bulgarian National Radio, Editor’s office for Bulgarians abroad, Club for Literature and Philosophy “IDIOT” (1995-2003), Publishing House “Arges”, Publishing House “Kama” , “Europe” schools, French Institute, Frankophone Agency, museum “Earth and Man”, and many other adventures…

Two words: surrealist in action

For contact: radosvetakk in gmail.com,

Radosveta Krastanova: My Place for a Future

We wish to make the island of public community a significant archipelago.

‘Europe on a crossroad: from the EP elections towards European Citizens’ Initiative’: Stoil TSITSELKOV (European Association for the Defence of Human Rights – Bulgaria and Shtastlivetsa Civic Association), Radosveta KRASTANOVA (Shtastlivetsa Civic Association and New Bulgarian University).

Official Closing of the Spring University at Chiprovtsi Municipality (Ceremonial Hall): Radosveta KRASTANOVA (Shtastlivetsa Civic Association and New Bulgarian University, Sofia, Bulgaria)

Radosveta KRASTANOVA

Presentation at Nottingham University:

On Spontaneous Civic Movements in Defense of Bulgarian Nature

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The Green Movement and the Green Parties in Bulgaria: Between System Integration and System Change – a new book by Radosveta Krastanova

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CONTENTS

Introduction

Part I: The Green Movement as a Dissident Movement
Origins and Emergence of the Green Movement in Bulgaria The Inspirations of the Dissident Movement in Bulgaria: Environmental Humanitarianism, Ecological Issues, Human Rights Activity, and Social Change From Global Change to Local Action
Part II: The Green Movement as a Non-Governmental Organization

From Dissident Politics to European Policies: Professionalization and Europeanization of the Green Movement Establishment and Consolidation of the Environmentalist NGOs Institutionalization of the Environmental Issues by Making Them Part of the Political Agenda

Part III: The Green Movement as a Civic Movement of a New Type or the “New Green Wave”

The Green Movement within the Post-Transition Context: New Challenges, New Issues, New Actors
Civic Green Policy
From Local Campaigns to a Global Change
From a Grassroots Movement to the Establishment of a New Green Party

Part IV. The Green Movement and the Green Parties
Parties of the Change and Parties of the Status-quoConclusion

The development and distinctiveness of the Green Movement and the green parties in Bulgaria reflect the intricate logic of the transformations, which have been taking place in Bulgarian society over the past quarter of a century. The actors of the Green Movement have responded to these processes both in the direction of system integration and – more frequently – in the direction of contesting and opposing the system, whereby in their most productive periods they have even contributed to system change.
Much like the green parties in the West, the Bulgarian environmental movement is the result of a social evolution promoted by a middle class that has endorsed a new type of modern culture. This middle class, however, has emerged and consolidated at a different historical time and in quite a different setting. This is the reason why it mirrors peculiarities that are common for the civic movements in the countries of the former socialist system, but at the same time it manifests specific traits typical for the “Bulgarian model” of transition.
Environmentalism is one of the few causes capable of generating wide public support in Bulgarian society on an ongoing basis. During the three stages of its evolution (the “dissident” period from the end of the 1980s, the “NGO” period during the 1990s, and the “new green wave” of the first decade of the 21st century), the Movement has been expressing public discontent, has defended public interest against private interests clad in power, and has been a unifying factor of the broad moral opposition against the practices of the political status quo. The Green Movement has also been manifesting the national attachment to Nature, the deep cultural roots of which span over centuries.
Despite its achievements, the Green Movement has failed to embed an autonomous and influential green party of its own in the institutions of power. The Movement – Party relationships are problematic. What has gained the upper hand is the logic that the Green Movement should go without a party and that the green parties should be outside the Green Movement. The reason why is that parties take environmentalism on board to the purpose of coming to power but afterwards they rapidly get marginalized.
The willpower for direct civic participation in the decision-making processes over the last years has marked a new stage in the development of the Green Movement. After 2005, the consolidation of the environmentalist community into a civic coalition named “For Nature in Bulgaria to Stay” and the establishment of a new green formation determined to represent an authentic environmental party (the Greens), have set up prerequisites for launching an autonomous environmental project in Bulgaria. The volatility of the party system and the voter disappointment with the parties of the status quo now have opened opportunities for new political actors to emerge.
The integration of the environmental project goes through the lasting inclusion of the green priorities on the agendas of all political parties and in the country’s policy at large. So far, the Bulgarian political system is far from envisaging an objective like this. The role of a catalyst to these processes once again falls on the shoulders of civic society embodied by the Green Movement, whereas the hopes for a “green breakthrough” in the system will continue to be linked to the synergy between this Movement and an authentic Green Party.

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(in Englisch)