23 YEARS IN THE SERVICE OF ROMANIAN HERITAGE AND COMMUNITIES
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During the workshops held in Mihăileni in August, the 20 children from the project created through their research and works a series of materials that we gathered as was natural in an exhibition. It was opened in the courtyard of George Enescu’s House. The parents and the local community in general received it with great interest and even pride. These children’s perspectives – ages ranging from 7 to 12- on their village, local resources and possibilities is a unique approach from which we can all find inspiration and hope, so we set out to organize this exhibition online as well.
The topics they had to cover during the days of the workshops or camp – as the children from the local community beautifully called it – were very varied.
The main project team was composed of Andreea Machidon and Mihai Petrescu
Teammates: Luiza Simion, Ana Maria Apostoiu and Irinia Novac;
Specialized trainers: Andreea Tincea – sound and Smaranda Ilie – animation
The ANIMEST team
The management of the Mihăileni school and local coordinator Adrian Hariga
“EventFullDays at the Enescu House – cultural-musical explorations and exercises” is a cultural project realized by the Pro Patrimonio Foundation in partnership with the UiPath Foundation and co-financed by AFCN.
Between August 14 and 22, 2020, the Enescu House opened its doors to the community!
We celebrated the end of the restoration site with a wide range of workshops and activities dedicated to children from Mihăileni and a piano concert by pianist Raluca Ştirbăţ on August 19, George Enescu’s birthday.
Around 20 children from Mihăileni benefited from an intense eight-day program dedicated to the exploration and creative transformation of local resources. The experiments were aimed at children’s befriending the idea of built heritage having as landmark and object of study the Enescu House itself. The whole project was enriched with meals with the team, sports and board games and evenings with animated films dedicated to the whole community.
At the first inquiry into the community, the children received each an Explorer’s Notebook that accompanied them in the mapping exercise of the elements that define the surroundings of the Enescu House – materials, craftsmen, objects, built spaces, natural spaces, stories, customs, recipes or plants. The work on the Notebooks was the basis for the first two workshops for the construction of a series of interactive local maps with elements of objective presentation, proposals and visions adapted to the requirements of the inhabitants and personal hiding places in the form of stories.
On the day dedicated to sound, through games and exercises the children observed the vibration of various elements in their immediate vicinity, tested voices and instruments, built handcrafted musical instruments and tuned their energies in an impromptu orchestra.
Within the workshop dedicated to the architecture specialist, the children built a house-lighting fixture with 5 layers of walk-in and creative understanding of the Enescu House: golden plan and proportions, component materials, specialized terms and graphic representations, the main section of the house and the interior in its past and future of phase.
In the role of landscapers, the children proposed scenarios for arranging the courtyard of the Enescu House and created structures from woven twigs for future climbing plants.
The team researched the history of the house, proposing together with a specialist an animation with its story and some moments George Enescu spent in Mihăileni.
The celebration of the official opening of the Enescu House brought together the children at the concert in the form of hosts and hopeful helpers in organizing the event.
The works and research gathered, the sports games practiced in all the afternoons in the backyard and the friendships made during this time were used as a pretext for a big final exhibition and a series of competitions with awards. The festive day created an opportunity to gather a large audience, curious about the children’s work and gathered the teams in sports competitions, fun games, ingenious rehearsals and dancing choreography. The badminton competition took place with a generous audience of parents, relatives, friends and neighbours, but also with tempting prizes. The children-parents culinary test gathered 15 local dishes, judged with great seriousness by all the tasters present on a musical background offered by a local children’s orchestra from Vicov.
The eight days were real educative and creative rehearsals for children, an opportunity to make friends with serious tools, such as: motosaw, drills, saws, pyrography tools or carving knives and playful challenges, local stories and reflections.
Starting with the first day, the children claimed the term workshops and turned it into a camp. No one was interested in the lunch break at home and everyone preferred to stay in the backyard for continuous game sessions or help offered to the team for various chores. The house courtyard was not large enough for the daily requests from children from all over the community to participate in the events, but the rules of distance imposed by the pandemic forced us to limit the number of participants, but also to promise that in better times we will put more workshop places available.
By the end of this year we intend to leave room for a surprise DIY kit, a future online exhibition of works and explorations from this summer, a presentation film for the project and a future digital map with the craftsmen around Enescu House.
None of this would have been possible without the basic team: Andreea Machidon and Mihai Petrescu set off with: trainers – teammates Luiza Simion, Ana Maria Apostoiu and Irinia Novac; specialized trainers Andreea Tincea – sound and Smaranda Ilie – animation; film specialist Alin Iacob; graphic specialist: Mona Petre; ANIMEST team; the school management from Mihăileni and the local coordinator Adrian Hariga.
The “camp” at the Enescu House started in 2020 and we all hope that it will be an event that will enrich the place every year.
“EventFullDays at the Enescu House – cultural-musical explorations and exercises” is a cultural project realized by the Pro Patrimonio Foundation in partnership with the UiPath Foundation and co-financed by AFCN.
The activity event calendar in the community from Mihăileni are the following:
August 14 – Map of Local Resources – transformation of research done by children through the Explorer’s Notebook into interactive thematic maps and proposals for activating Mihăileni
August 15 – Emotional Map and Imaginary Map of Mihăileni – personal perspectives and views on where they live in the form of DIY projects
August 16 – Sound Workshop – sound research and interpretation, along with group experiments and the practice of building a musical instrument
August 17 – Film Workshop – theoretical elements and the practical exercise of making a short film about local resources
August 18 – Heritage Caravan – Who is the landscape designder? – proposing a 3D plan for arranging George Enescu’s house garden and the exercise of some artistic installations made of wickerwork
August 19 – Heritage Caravan – Who is the historian? – discovering the story of George Enescu’s house, of the one who lived in it and of some musical elements from George Enescu’s work, in the form of a dynamic game with physical and cultural tests
August 20 – Heritage Caravan – Who is the architect? – discovering the constructive layers of the house by creating a model-object
August 21 – Animation Workshop – theoretical elements and the practical exercise of making an animation about the story of Enescu’s house: the construction of frames and characters, animation of frames, filming, sound and editing
August 22 – Festive Day in the Community – exhibition with children’s works, culinary contest in the community and other surprise elements addressed to the whole community.
In all nine evenings we will have an animation and film program open to the whole community – within the available places – with the support of ANIMEST and ONE WORLD ROMANIA.
Supplemental: August 19 – The Inauguration Concert of George Enescu’s house in Mihăileni performed by pianist Raluca Ştirbăţ and soprano Ileana Tonca, active supporters of saving the house, will take place in the house and will be broadcast outside to a small audience in the yard
All 15 children who will take part in the program were selected with the help of community teachers based on their interest.
EventFull Days al Casa Enescu – Cultural-Musical Explorations and Exercises is one of Pro Patrimonio Foundation’s cultural projects, co-funded by AFCN and carried out in partnership with the UiPath Foundation, which started in early July through a mapping and research of local craftsmen and will continue in August with heritage workshops for children, an inaugural concert on August 19 and other surprises that we hope we can safely put into practice.
EventFull Days al Casa Enescu – Cultural-Musical Explorations and Exercises is one of Pro Patrimonio Foundation’s cultural projects, co-funded by AFCN and carried out in partnership with the UiPath Foundation
The Project ”Enescu Festival – cultual-musical explorations and exercises” has started!
In order to better know the location of George Enescu’s House and its surroundings, we proposed to start to start the exercise of mapping craftsmen and local resources around the house between July 1-4, 2020. Two teams patrolled for four days within a radius of approximately 50-60 km around the architectural object to sketch the story around Mihăileni.
The route was based on maps of existing craftsmen online https://hartamesterilorconstructii.ro/ și https://www.hartamestesugarilor.ro/,valuable and rich information collected from ethnographic museums and tourist information centres in the area and clues provided by the locals themselves. The abundance of craftsmen in these places forced us to make a forced selection of field visits and to keep the research tracks open for other times.
We managed to visit 25 craftsmen and we got acquainted with the cultural differences and similarities of Bucovina and Moldova on foot through villages and cities or through museum research.
Even if the theme of this project is limited to research, our ideas for future collaborations have already started having met such skilled craftsmen and from such varied areas.
In the marathon experience of field research I met: blacksmiths, weavers, sculptors and carpenters, stonemasons, skinners, glassmakers and weavers. As in the research at Câmpulung Muscel in Argeş County, around Villa Golescu, we were impressed by both the joys and the hardships of each craft.
We hope the preservation and re-adaptation of all these traditions will someday be the object of a future Honest Goods collection from George Enescu’s House in Mihăileni and to incite as many people as possible to access the existing human and cultural resources nearby.
We would like to thank the craftsmen for lodging us and for their stories, as well as the volunteers, Ruxandra Sacaliș and Ana Luiza Simion without whom we would not have been able to find out so many things.
“The Enescu House Festival – cultural-musical explorations and exercises” is one of Pro Patrimonio’s cultural projects co-financed by AFCN. The project does not necessarily represent the position of the National Cultural Fund Administration. AFCN is not responsible for the content of the project or how the project results can be used. These are entirely the responsibility of the beneficiary of the funding.
This summer the restoration of George Enescu’s House in Mihăileni is completed and we are preparing the opening of its gates to the community and curious people outside with educational activities and thematic cultural events that will be realized with the support of AFCN and the UiPath Foundation. These are meant to bring the house back to life in the context of today and to help an audience as diverse as possible be aware of the house’s cultural value and its potential to redefine itself in contemporary, through its musical-memorial and architectural value, but also through the opportunity it being set around important natural and human resources
We want to lay the foundations of a long-term educational heritage and music program. The project called “Enescu House Festival – cultural-musical explorations and exercises” uses the experience from four years of Heritage Education workshops that we conducted around other heritage objectives – Perticari-Davila Mansion, Neamțu Mansion and Golescu Villa – which we constantly take care of. Elements from the guide “Education for Heritage” (http://bit.ly/GhidEducatiePentruPatrimoniu) written at the end of last year are incorporated into this program while elements dedicated to music, specific to the place, are also introduced. The whole approach is completed by a specific research of the local resources whose primary aims are materials, crafts, sounds and stories of the area.
This year’s campaign will run for a cumulative period of about three weeks this summer between July and September. It will include: a research and a creative mapping of the cultural resources of the place, an educational caravan for heritage that will place children in a practical and playful way in the roles of heritage specialists (urban planner, architect, historian and landscaper) , film and animation workshops, a DIY surprise workshop, the challenge of creating and caring for a small garden at Casa Enescu, movie nights in the community and a festive event, along with an online exhibition of the project, addressed to a very wide public range, which gathers the accumulated research and creative experiments and sparks people’s interest in the work and life of George Enescu, in the context of celebrating this day and the international marking of the Beethoven year.
“The Enescu House Festival – cultural-musical explorations and exercises” is one of Pro Patrimonio’s cultural projects co-financed by AFCN. The project does not necessarily represent the position of the National Cultural Fund Administration. AFCN is not responsible for the content of the project or how the project results can be used. These are entirely the responsibility of the beneficiary of the funding.
UiPath Foundation is a partner of Pro Patrimonio Foundation in the program “The Academy of Music and Education for Children” which takes place from February 2020 at the House of George Enescu in Mihăileni.
Argument
Our projects for heritage education have focused from the beginning on the consolidation of a lasting relationship between a community and the cultural elements of value in its immediate vicinity through a more or less structured series of workshops and events dedicated to young audiences.
During the last 3 years, the communities of children around Neamțu Manor, Olari, Perticari-Davila Manor, Izvoru and Golescu Village, Câmpulung-Muscel, have benefited from constant activities that investigated the local material and immaterial heritage through games, models, hands-on workshops, crafts, exhibitions or film screenings in the community.
Through the project “EDUCATION FOR HERITAGE” this year we managed to structure, transform and enrich in a structured heritage program our meetings and workshops organized so far.
Through the project “EDUCATION FOR HERITAGE” this year we managed to structure, transform and enrich in a structured heritage program our meetings and workshops organized so far
In each of the 3 communities, it included 4 hands-on workshops playing the role of field specialists: urban planner, architect, landscape designer, artist or craftsman and a final meeting, dedicated to the whole community, with animation and cinema workshops adapted to local stories, constructive adventures, culinary contests, movie evenings and even camping at the manor.
Who is it for?
The guide “Heritage Education” gathers all this experience and even completes the activities with new challenges. This is a structured proposal for introducing children to the world of heritage and for a more in-depth exploration of the built and natural cultural values and the crafts in the area where the courses take place. It is an initiative that aims to connect the community to local resources and the practical and creative activation of the space it inhabits.
How do you use it?
The proposed activities and programs invite children to explore the surrounding universe by playing the part of different specialists and integrating different ideas into 1: 1 scale projects in their community. They can be integrated throughout the school year, can be the subject of the school week A Different Kind of School, can be thought of as holiday activities or freely integrated into any desired program.
Why is it necessary?
The segment Education for Heritage addressed to young people has emerged as a direct consequence of the need for community involvement in the projects of restoration and activation of the built heritage carried out by the foundation in various places in the country.
We hope that this guide will best respond to the needs and curiosities of children and provide real help in as many of the communities where development is desired in direct relation to local cultural values.
“Education for Heritage” is an open publication available online, an incipient form of a possible future course to be implemented as an optional in the school curriculum, which awaits suggestions and improvement advice from users.
The guide can be downloaded directly from the Pro Patrimonio Foundation Online Library:http://bit.ly/GhidEducatiePentruPatrimoniu
Another tour of workshops for children held at the manors looked after by Pro Patrimonio – Perticari- Davila Manor in Izvoru village, Neamțu Manor in Olari village and Golescu villa in Câmpulung – has come to an end. This second tour was coordinated by our generous Andreea Machidon supported by dedicated and special volunteers. For the very first time, we would like to thank one of the mothers, Daniela Marchidan, who has worked with patience and care with the children as well as with her 10-year old son. They have helped not only in the organization, but also in the process of creating objects. We also give our warm thanks to the extremely creative and fun Isabella Madauna, architecture student.
The theme of this tour around the manors was getting close to and understanding nature and natural elements by means of observation and reinterpreted drawing. The teams of children from the three manors managed to paint botanical elements on lunch-box type pouches suitable for gatehring plants, leaves or nuts and which will soon be on sale. They also designed their own pencil-case type minipouches for school which they personalized using the stamp technique after having made their ow FIMO stamps.
They managed to create an adorable series of colourful agendas using a simple method of book binding. These are to be their private agendas with modules they can change by themselves once they run out of clean pages. A very useful instrument for their future creative development is the notion of font that they found out about and which they exercised on their new agendas. The work was done outside in Neamțu Manor and Golescu Villa, the children fully enjoying nature, while at Izvoru the workshop took place inside the canteen rebuilt during the former workshops.
Tour of the Manors is the second from the series this year and is part of a more ample Pro Patrimonio Foundation project, Education for Heritage undergo this year under the umbrella of the European Year of Cultural Heritage #EuropeForCulture, #EYCH2018
Semințe de conac (Mansion seeds) is a project that involves collaboration between Pro Patrimonio and the children from Izvoru Commune, Arges County. Together we try to design a place for creative activities and others in the Perticari Davila Mannor Complex dedicated to the entire community.
Pro Patrimonio developed an itinerant project that announces the coming of winter holidays through a series of creative and educational workshops for children in communities bordering the mansions and monuments where they operate: Neamţu Mansion from Olari, Perticari-Davila Mansion from Izvoru and Villa Golescu from Câmpulung.
As a result, under the guidance of architect Andreea Machidon, the children made a limited collection of handmade objects that are found annually at the Christmas Fair of the Verona Bookstore in Bucharest. And in 2017, the Christmas decorations made by the children from Izvoru during the activities organized by Pro Patrimonio for the preservation and bringing to light of the Perticari Mansion were available at the bookstore Cărturești in Bucharest. They have been purchased at the price of a donation that goes to support the Foundation’s projects.
Under the coordination of Pro Patrimonio Foundation and with the help of volunteers, a series of events took place between 2015-2016: exhibitions about the history and cultural value of the Perticari-Davila Estate, film screenings, games, discussions, creative-educational workshops, exhibition of the Perticari family, drawing activities, sports and first aid courses, etc. Much of this has occurred in the basement of the small mansion where the Izvoru community has attended events.
In 2016, Pro Patrimonio also got involved in the school program Școala Altfel: at our architecture course we drew our own homes, investigated local materials, and created the model of our colleague’s house using the resources available in Izvoru. The dance course has raised much interest and curiosity among both the younger and the elder.
