Hi, team,
I’ll start with some quick words about myself: I’m one of the founding editors of SUB25, an online magazine dedicated to youth culture and promoting Romanian creatives and projects with a knack for making this a more fun and beautiful country. I’ve also been writing for Decât o Revistă quarterly since its very first issue, back in 2009, and I’ve been the editor of one of its online series, Bucureșteanul, for 2 years. The purpose of the series is to tell stories about the people who live in the big B.
One thing I’d love to be able to do for a living is to write about change makers, about those who cannot sit still, about those who believe you’re only really doomed when you give up trying. Once you begin to look around, you see them everywhere, so many people to meet, so many initiatives to keep up with. Unfortunately, making a living out of this still seems a remote possibility.
Yesterday, while walking aimlessly (my favorite way of discovering and falling for the city all over again), this time through Cotroceni, I found a I found a poster that lead me to Încotroceni – a Facebook page dedicated to the people who live in the neighborhood and want to talk about it and get to know it better. I didn’t know about this page, but then again, I realized, maybe we only need to know about them in order to see how much can be done on a small scale. Maybe what we need is more of Inițiativa Favorit or Prietenii Parcului IOR, people who share a neighborhood, brought together by a common good or mission. Maybe what we need is more of what CeRe does on the civic front, an amazing NGO that is helping citizens to form neighborhood organizations, find leaders am and intervene in the city administration process. Maybe each neighborhood should have its own revival, its finding itself and fighting to change itself. And this thought – because all aimless walks eventually lead me to familiar places – reminded me of two other things: 1. A scene from ONGFest, which took place last weekend – three kids working together around a small table to solve a puzzle map; the pieces were the city’s neighborhoods. 2. There’s not much to do in one’s neighborhood. Almost all the significant cultural events happen close to the city center. People have more chances to accidentally meet those they share a street with at the supermarket than at a concert, a debate, an exhibition, a small festival. And all those events – the concert, the opening, the festival – are places where we usually make new acquaintances, find out about all sorts of things, build communication bridges.
What I’d love to do is bring groups like A.R.C.E.N., Calup, ORICUM, CeRe together, to see if and how cultural initiatives and civic participation ones could come together in order to help shape and strengthen communities all around the city. I’d top it with contributions from superheroes like Funky Citizens and The Sponge, to see how technology could help with that. Gazeta blocului? A zine or photo challenge (and exhibition) dedicated to the past and the present of a boulevard? More of Femei pe Mătăsari, an event that closes a street for a weekend and turns it into a festival venue? More closed streets? More open houses, where people could meet and talk, about anything from cooking to reading? I’m still brainstorming this myself.
PS: Welcome to Bucharest, Noemi.
