Europe for Citizens – Europe 4 All
International Volunteers Week in Bitola 2019

Creative Europe - ECHO

ECHO is an international project in the field of arts, culture, and heritage that aims to enhance cultural production and reinforce the European sense of belonging by connecting contemporary artistic creation with the Dark Cultural Heritage of local communities in Europe.

Dark Heritage is connected to events that traumatize groups and determine their cultural identity. Such events concern societies, as physical and conceptual spaces related to war, genocide, mass killings, ethnic conflict, oppression, violence, and death bear such moments in their heritage, tangible and intangible. Dealing with traumatic heritage may have therapeutic effects for locals and outsiders. War and conflict spaces exist around the whole of Europe; thus, dark heritage can be a starting point for dialogue for artists and citizens.

ECHO attempts to 1) tighten and promote the link between artistic creation and dark heritage, 2) enable contemporary artistic co-creation based on cultural elements from new, old, and future EU member states, and 3) capture original images of local communities as a cultural entirety and as part of the European cultural context.

ECHO tries to benefit a) artists through cultural and artistic practice exchange and stimuli, b) art receivers by promoting audience development through creations that concentrate on local communities’ dark heritage and arts from new, old, and future EU states.

The project will:

Promote local dark heritage through artistic co-creations aiming at enhancing a European sense of belonging.

-Facilitate cultural and artistic exchange between new, old, and future EU member states.

ECHO as a pilot project includes 2 Art Residencies in Knin, Croatia, and Novi Sad, Serbia, of 4 visual artists each (8 artists in total), 4 Community Engagement Activities (2 in each local community), and an Art Exhibition in Veliki Preslav Municipality, Bulgaria.

Project Number: 595934-CREA-1-2018-1-EL-CULT-COOP3

For more information on ECHO, contact Veroniki Krikoni at krikoni@interaliaproject.com or Nikos Pasamitrosa atpasamitros@interaliaproject.com

ECHO is co-financed by the CREATIVE EUROPE programme of the European Commission, and its specific objectives are related to the objectives of the 2018 European Year of Cultural Heritage.

ECHO – European Cultural Heritage Onstage Kick Off Meeting

Between the 20th and the 23rd of July 2018, the kick-off meeting of the European Cultural Heritage Onstage (ECHO) took place in Athens, Greece, between the managers of the partner organizations.

The partners—Pepa Peneva, representing the Open Space Foundation; Milcho Duli, from Sfera Macedonia; and Zeljko Stanetic, from Vojvodina Civic Center—came together on the premises of Inter Alia to kick off the ECHO project. The partners specified the strategies for the project activities that will follow, including recruitment criteria for artists participating in residencies as well as solid dissemination and communication plans.

The Caravan Project, Greece, attended the meeting as the Athenian organization will be following and creating a documentary film throughout the duration of the project.

In the next steps, the ECHO partners will launch the call for artists and prepare for the residencies in Bitola, North Macedonia, and Novi Sad, Serbia.

Stay tuned at Inter Alia’s website and on social media for further developments, and follow the project-related hashtags #DarkHeritage and #EuropeForCulture

 

Press Release Echo

The Association for Sustainable Development SFERA MACEDONIA – Bitola is one of the partner organizations currently working on the implementation of the project ECHO (European Cultural Heritage Onstage), funded by the Creative Europe program of the European Union.

ECHO is an international pilot project in the fields of culture, heritage, and the arts that aims to enhance cultural production and reinforce the European sense of belonging by connecting contemporary artistic creation with the Cultural Heritage of local communities in Europe. Photography, video, painting, and crafts are the means to be used to reveal the tangible and intangible local heritage. The project has a duration of 12 months, starting on July 1, 2018, and it includes partner organizations from four countries: Bulgaria, North Macedonia, Greece, and Serbia.

SFERA MACEDONIA, as the Macedonian partner for this project, will organize an art residency in Bitola between October 22 and November 22, 2018, during which three foreign artists, coming from Greece, Bulgaria, and Serbia, will work together with the Macedonian artist Ljubica Meshkova Solakovska on the creation of their individual artworks on the topic of the project.

As part of the activities planned for the artists, we will visit different locations around Bitola since, during WWI, the Macedonian Front was stationed in and around Bitola and tasked with fighting off Bulgarian and German forces. The artists will visit the First World War trail in Pelister National Park, which will provide a great opportunity for them to learn more about the First World War. The second visit will be to the Mariovo region, Mountain Nidze, and the Peak Kajmakcalan, which was the key position on the Macedonian front during the First World War.

During the art residency, we will organize two Community Engagement Activities, with the purpose of presenting the art residency and its purpose to the local community and getting the artists and locals acquainted. There will also be an opportunity for the locals who would like to visit the artists to do so at any time during the activity, meet the artists, and present their own suggestions, proposals, and ideas that will influence the outputs of the Art Residencies.

Info Session

The project European Cultural Heritage Onstage "ECHO" is financed by the Creative Europe program and will start on October 22, 2018, and run until November 11, 2018. It includes artists from Serbia, Greece, Bulgaria, and North Macedonia. The idea of the project is to transform the dark heritage of the region into a positive activity that will remain in the city for the long term.
According to the project, the artists had an info session in ART Studio "SOLAK," in which they became familiar with the activities through informal conversation.
The artists expressed huge interest and motivation for the project, so we think that during the art colony, the city will get a positive image in terms of art, which will have long-term sustainability.

Press Conference

The Association for Sustainable Development SFERA Macedonia — Bitola is one of the partner organizations currently working on the implementation of the project ECHO (European Cultural Heritage Onstage) funded by the Creative Europe program of the European Union.


SFERA MACEDONIA, as the Macedonian partner for this project, will organize an art residency in Bitola between October 22 and November 22, 2018, during which three foreign artists, coming from Greece, Bulgaria, and Serbia, will work together with the Macedonian artist Ljubica Meshkova Solakovska on the creation of their individual art works on the topic of the project.

On October 24, as a way to promote the start of the art residency and introduce the artists and the project to the local community, SFERA MACEDONIA organized a press conference with all the artists who are taking part in the art residency and Milcho Duli as a representative of SFERA MACEDONIA. The artists shared their vision of the project, their past experiences, and their expectations of the art residence.
ECHO is an international pilot project in the fields of culture, heritage, and the arts that aims to enhance cultural production and reinforce the European sense of belonging by connecting contemporary artistic creation with the Dark Cultural Heritage of local communities in Europe. Photography, video, painting, and crafts are the means to be used to reveal the tangible and intangible local heritage. The project has a duration of 12 months, starting on July 1, 2018, and it includes partner organizations from 4 countries: Bulgaria, North Macedonia, Greece, and Serbia.

According to the project, the artists had an info session in ART Studio "SOLAK," in which they became familiar with the activities through informal conversation.

The artists expressed huge interest and motivation for the project, so we think that during the art colony, the city will get a positive image in terms of art, which will have long-term sustainability.

Study Visit Pelister

During the walk, we got information from the professor that in September 1916, the French-Serbian forces, when they had regrouped earlier, began a counter-offensive and forced the Bulgarian-German forces to retreat to Kajmakcalan’s initial positions. After this success, the Serbian forces began an offensive attack, and during the two-day fighting on the turn of the Crna River and in the right-hander of Bitola, they broke the Bulgarian-German defense. During this offensive, Bitola was conquered by the forces of the Entente, and the Bulgarian-German forces were forced to retreat to the heights of Pelister and the northwest of Bitola.
The path is actually a museum with many landmarks related to the First World War, such as trenches where the soldiers are making positions for better targets, places for cannons, and places for machine guns, which was good for inspiration and motivation on the artists' part to continue further with activities of the project.
The project "European Cultural Heritage Onstage" (ECHO) is financed by the Creative Europe programme supported by the European Union in partnership with the association for sustainable development SFERA Macedonia, where participants are artists from four different countries: Serbia, Greece, Bulgaria, and North Macedonia.
On October 26, 2018, SFERA MACEDONIA organized a study visit session in Pelister with a professional guide who had huge knowledge and experience about the topic. (History Teacher)
We were walking on the path of war, which starts at the Info Center in Pelister and ends near the hotel Molika.

Study Visit Kajmakchalan and Mariovo

On October 27, 2018, SFERA Macedonia organized a trip to Kajmakcalan peak on Nidze Mountain with a jeep and a professional guide as well, which gave a lot of information about the mountain, especially on the peak where is the memory chapel of the First World War, which is known as "The Front of Kajmakcalan" between Bulgarian army from one side and French and Serbian army from the other side.

During the Battle of Kajmakcalan in 4600, people from the Serbian army died there, which in history is known as one of the fiercest battles in the First World War. In the memory chapel, there is an exposed jar with the heart inside of the famous doctor Rice from Switzerland, who was healing wounded Serbians in the battle.

Afterwards, we visited a few villages in the Mariovo region, where we got information that in the middle century, after longtime battles and wars with Byzantium, with medieval Bulgarian King Samoil and King Dushan Kingdom, Mariovo as a region came under many different authorities until the complete fall of Macedonia under Ottoman slavery toward the end of the 14th century.

It is known that in the fifteenth century, the whole area was a separate political and territorial administrative unit—a Mariovo ham—that did not have direct control of the Turkish Pasha but was a semi-free autonomous unit with an obligation to pay annual taxes on agricultural products and goods.

With this trip, we helped the artists get better inspiration and make something good with their skills and capabilities so that Bitola, as the second largest city in North Macedonia, will have other images in Europe with the artistic goods, which will remain in the city as a memory that one month ago people from other countries came to Bitola with ideas, inspiration, motivation, and creativity to make a change in the society, which will have a better impact in the community and help look up dark memories with a positive thought.

SFEST festival

Within the SFEST festival, the second community event program schedule was fulfilled with many interesting things, such as magic tricks organized by the magician Gandini (Goran Mitrevski), who is very famous at the national and international levels.

Afterward, there were two guys who did a graffiti workshop (Dragan Milovanov and Vladimir Boskovski). The graffiti, which they were accompanied by chill music from DJ Boba Funk, and many people from Bitola of all ages had the chance to watch and have fun during the graffiti workshop. At 7:00 p.m., the party started with a few DJs from different countries around the Balkans and Australia. They played progressive house music all night, which made the atmosphere more interesting.

Around 250 people took part in this event, the majority of whom were between the ages of 18 and 35. The people show a lot of interest in this festival because it is something new and specific, and it lasts for three days, so they have enough time to fill their free time with fun. The SFERA team, as one of the organizers, was always around for logistical support and better efficiency of the festival, as well as increasing awareness among the people for protecting the environment, recycling, and upcycling.

Exhibition ECHO – Dark Heritage

After a month of hard work, the artists in residence at ECHO showed their work at an exhibition on the 21st of November. The theme of the project ECHO (European Cultural Heritage Onstage) has been war, and the group of four artists from Bulgaria, Greece, Serbia, and North Macedonia has focused on the First World War. Accompanied by local artists and interested visitors, the artists and SFERA Macedonia opened the exhibition.

The artists have expressed their perspectives on the First World War in various disciplines. Photography, paintings, as well as sculptures, were presented. Whereas some artworks focus on the remembrance of war, other artworks focus on the Treaty of Versailles.

The exhibition in Bitola has been a sneak peek at the overarching ECHO exhibition. In April 2019, the artworks will be shown in Sofia, together with the artworks of other artists working on the ECHO project.