This August, the Mihai Eminescu Trust Foundation is hosting Urban Art Month, a series of four free workshops, each lasting one week, dedicated to Sighișoara’s children and youth. The workshops are taking place in the Butchers’ Bastion, a part of the city’s historical fabric that has recently been repurposed as part of the CULTFORT – Fortress of Urban Culture Project.
The Foundation is collaborating with artists and craftsmen from Sighișoara to organize children’s workshops, including Rareș Kerekeș, an esteemed young painter from the city who is leading painting workshops, and Teli Iacșa, a plastic artist from Țopa, Mureș County, who is teaching children to repurpose recycled materials and various artistic techniques to create a replica of a medieval lady. The lady’s structure is comprised entirely of recovered PET bottles, wrapped in parquet insulation and sackcloth, and of a “dress” painted by children with acrylic paint. Her belt is made of repurposed plastic, leather, and other scraps, her head of papier-mâché (paper with flour and water), her painted mask a discarded item in and of itself, and her “hair” of hemp and discarded jewellery. Children participating in the workshop are learning to experiment with different artistic techniques: papier-mâché (paper sculpture), acrylic painting on plastic (through making decorated masks and learning about glass painting techniques), textile printing, sewing, knotting, cone-making, and utilizing acrylic sprays. The Mihai Eminescu Trust Foundation will be displaying the children’s medieval lady at the Butchers’ Bastion for one month.
The third series of workshops focuses on photography and is led by Ștefan Buga, a young photographer from Cluj-Napoca. Participating children have already dived into the theory behind powerful photography, and these days you can find them around the Sighişoara citadel, putting their newfound photographic expertise into practice. In the coming days, the children will be assembling collages of photos taken throughout the city which will be displayed as part of a Foundation-organized exhibition at the end of the workshop series.
The workshop series will end with a week full of wood painting workshops beginning on August 28th, led by Zsolt Máthé, a wood restorer and painter. Participating children will discover the intricate stories behind floral motifs found on old furniture pieces, traditional colours used for decorating furniture, and wood painting techniques.
152 children and young people aged between 6 and 17 have signed up for Urban Culture Month, whose workshops will conclude on August 31. Beginning in September, the Foundation will organize a further series of activities and events as part of the CULTFORT Project within the Butchers’ Bastion: six film screenings, and four sensory events including culinary and videomapping classes.
Event details will be published on the Project’s Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/cultfort/
About CULTFORT
The Mihai Eminescu Trust Foundation in Sighișoara launched the CULTFORT – Fortress of Urban Culture Project in 2022 with funding from EEA Grants 2014-2021, under the RO-CULTURE Program for strengthening cultural entrepreneurship and developing public engagement. The project, lasting 24 months, has received total non-reimbursable funding of 794,115 lei, of which 11% (98,149 lei) was contributed by the Mihai Eminescu Trust Foundation.
The project addresses the key needs identified by the Foundation’s team during public debates organized in 2019 in Sighișoara: improving cultural management, involving local businesses, creating multifunctional cultural spaces, and enriching the local cultural agenda. Through this Project, the Foundation aims to foster the development of Sighişoara’s creative cultural sector by strengthening the strategic planning, entrepreneurship, and cultural management skills of thirty professionals and practitioners from the cultural and creative sectors by 2023. The Project also aims to increase the general public’s access to Sighișoara’s cultural offerings through twenty-three classical, modern, folk, or contemporary art events,