Turing Scheme & Arts Lab 5.0: Raphaelle Kent, UK - Month 1

The first month of the project has been very busy, meeting new people, discovering Romanian culture, organising workshops and taking part in various other art projects. During the first couple of weeks we attended the Folcloristica festival in a nearby village. The 3 day festival had some beautiful moments including visiting artists and crafters in their homes, traveling by horse and cart between the locations and watching the traditional songs and dances performed by local children.

During the festival, artists were required to create a workshop. I organised a workshop for children where they could connect to Romanian folk music by painting the emotions the music made them feel as we listened together.

Since then I have taken part in an art residency at a school for children who aren’t in mainstream education. The residency involved creatively working with stones and cement to leave an artistic mark on the school. With the teenagers we painted stones together with folkloric patterns and cemented them in to fix a broken step.

At the start of this residency I felt a bit unsure if we would get much interest in the workshop, but each time we went back some new boys would join the group and they would help us. We ended up having a good time together and made lots of art.

As well as organising workshops we had the chance to visit an archaeological site of the Cucuteni civilisation with a professor who talked us through the communities history. This was a lovely day of connecting with nature and the ancient Cucuteni civilisation, the local community baked bread in a traditional oven made of earth and fire, we also had musical moments shared with the group.

Each volunteer brings something unique and special to the project and I have loved getting to know everyone. We are many nationalities in the same house and it is a lot of fun to learn new things from each other; recipes, language etc… It has also been wonderful to begin to discover Romanian culture together. I look forward to the next few months!

Raphaelle Kent is from United Kingdom and she is participating in a six-month volunteering program within Arts Lab 5.0, a project co-funded by the Turing Scheme UK and by European Union through the European Solidarity Corps.