In parallel with the MultiKulti workshops that are happening in April and May, a special kind of workshop is being held on a weekly basis: the „Art and Craft” workshop, which is part of the CU TENDA project (see description below).
The workshops are gathering around 20 primary school students, for various activities that include learning about the Vlach culture through painting, music and traditions.
Dragoslav Boskovski, one of the facilitators of the workshops, shared with us his impressions from the workshops:
„Our workshops are based on arts and crafts, exploring the topic of Vlach culture and traditions. The participants are greatly interested, and ready to absorb and make use of the Vlach motifs and ornaments, and they find the Vlach music greatly useful and challenging. In our opinion, the participants are going to broaden their knowledge about the Vlach culture but also and their own culture, and we strive to help them challenge the unwritten rules imposed by society.
Besides the regular workshops, the participants had a visit at the local Museum of History, where they learned about the archaeological discoveries and traditional elements that were found in the area of Kumanovo.
CU TENDA is a 4-year project, organized in partnership with the National Museum of the Romanian Peasant, CID Center for Intercultural Dialogue, O.R.S. Osservatorio ricerca sociale, Italy, and the Plovdiv University „Paisii Hilendarski”, in Bulgaria, and supported by the Creative Europe Programme of the European Commission. The core concept of the project is the challenge to envision and experience heritage, especially intangible heritage, through a multitude of perspectives, methods, disciplines (anthropology/ ethnography, museography, photography, visual arts, performance arts, craftwork, music etc.).
