Practically every local initiative is given our logistic support, i.e. all of the Centre’s resources are available to the local initiatives all the time.
After we had realized the needs of the small communities, i.e. complete absence of cultural events there, three years ago the Centre decided to start with the implementation of a program for cultural development of rural regions. Practically, the first two years were a pilot-stage in order to enable us to realize the real needs of the population and to find out ways for us to fit in and help in that situation, and to create potentials for development of the regions as well. In fact, our ideas of cultural development are based on directing the local potentials and creative ideas. You cannot come to a village and impose ideas, you can organize some events, as we do, like village cinemas and different kinds of concepts, but these are events interesting for all the people, these are a kind of attractors. When it comes to something like this, one should be very careful because if the initiatives do not come from the communities, they will not give the results that are expected. Every activity has to be a result of some idea of the local people. Practically, we initiate processes that eventually result in initiatives that we further analyse, canalise and help. This is, in fact, the basic concept for sustainable development that can be applied in our country, especially in cases with small budgets, because only the initiatives that come out from the local communities can respond to their needs and problems and have a chance to be successful.

What is your experience from the work with organizations from rural areas? How open are they for cooperation, to which extent do they accept new ideas for development? What do you offer them?
The Centre, mainly, works in rural regions with a larger number of “alive” villages, practically we direct our work toward those regions with large and “alive” villages, where live young people who want to continue living in the village and work on their economic, social and cultural development, as well as the development of the activities happening there. We have never worked in a village where there are not young people, where the young people have left the village. In those villages, there is no use to try to work on the cultural development or canalising the creative initiatives. If there is not a young or middle-aged generation in one region, there are very small chances for prosperity of those communities. This is possible only in villages that can offer extraordinary tourist attractions for something alike and with that to draw the attention of the investors and of people who would inhabit the place, but this is still unimaginable in Macedonia.

Local organization and other bodies, mainly show interest for cooperation and it is interesting that it constantly grows in the regions where we work and implement our projects. Our goal is to show through examples everything that can be done in a community for its faster development, but the decision for starting certain initiatives has to be made by the local organizations. When such an initiative is developed, it is already supported by the community. Our job is, together with local citizen organizations or authorities to formulate it, to give it a shape, to help in finding funds, to help with the realization… Practically, every local initiative is given our logistic support; all of the Centre’s resources are available for the local initiatives. A few days ago, for example, in the square in the village of Rostushe there was a live broadcast of the Eurovision song contest. The idea was theirs, we provided the equipment, and the result was 400 people in the square of the village.

Have your activities been going into a direction of creating a long-term, specific strategy for animating the creative energy of the citizens?
Creating a strategy for cultural development of rural regions is quite a complex process, in fact, you cannot find anything alike in any book, you cannot find the basics for such thing, and when you create a strategy, you have to be very careful because if you make a mistake, it could have long-term consequences. For the time being, maybe to the end of this year or the next year, we are planning to establish cooperation with the organizations from this region and from Europe which deal with the same problems, to share the experiences, both positive and negative, to see if there are common points in all those initiatives, and after that maybe to start creating that kind of strategy. It is easy to canalise the creative potentials of the communities and to gain positive results, but it takes years to come to conclusions which can be used for creating a strategy that could be generally accepted.

How much regional experience is there in the projects you implement, and do you need such experience?
If regional experience means cooperation between communities in a region, then we have it a lot. None of the initiatives is aimed strictly to one village. There are always several villages, even municipalities. The interesting fact is that neighbouring regions to the regions where projects are implemented, show interest to take initiatives. We are open for cooperation, so they come, see, and learn. That is good and positive and it is important for the process to begin.

This spring was organised the first fair “Live heritage”, which attracted the public and the media. Are you proceeding with the same program of FIOOM and in which direction?
Yes. The Centre is working on the technical and administrative coordination of the project for revitalization of the Old Bazaar in Skopje within the program “Live heritage” of FIOOM. The web site for the Bazaar is being prepared. The idea for organizing the fair resulted from the need to present to the public projects realized by local communities. People should know what has been done and what is offered so that they can use that. There is no use of having arranged waterfalls, which are accessible, if the only people that know that are the neighbouring villagers. The more people know about the things they can see, the better it is. Only with a presentation and advertising, we can expect results, i.e. visitors to the projects of “Live heritage”. For instance, if this weekend 50 people visit the Lake Lokuf on Deshat Mounain or the Smolarski Waterfall, they will spend some money in the villages and there comes a small financial injection. People will find a way to sell to the visitors some souvenirs and the progress is guaranteed. The Fair has also had a financial positive effect. People that produce traditional objects sold quite a lot in those days, and they had a lot of orders too, which is an important thing for the producers. They do not have problems with the production, but with the sale. Considering all of this, we do hope that next year as well, together with FIOOM we will organize this kind of fair again.

 
Katerina Bogoeva