AROUND TRADITION

"Around Tradition" is an informal "school of tradition" - a series of actions which attempt to show and document the disappearing systems, behaviors, rituals and traditional practices, as well as answers to important questions: what a tradition might be the today, what exactly is the essence of a feast and a community . Those answers we seek, in the immediate vicinity, as well as in remote and inaccessible areas, such as Romanian Bukovina, Hutsulshchyna or Transnistria.
The gained experience we use in practice: during concerts, meetings, gatherings, going from theatre space to people, towards small towns, rural clubs and private homes, usually far from cultural centers. Conducting operations in "natural environment" we try to give them the proper context, to overcome division between the performers and the audience.

The project includes:

• workshops presenting vanishing customs and skills (led by practitioners and participated by specialists researchers): singing workshops, workshops of playing traditional instruments, dancing workshops, community-oriented meetings in which participants have the opportunity to experience the co-presence and power of the group’s impact (accomplished often in rural environment)
• expedition “towards people”: study/research trips to understand and document the living tradition, including the form of a meeting, based on dialogue and the exchange
• undertakings based on practical use of skills acquired during workshops in areas remote from cultural centres intended at the same time to stimulate local communities, and to restore memory and awareness of vanishing traditions among residents of visited areas
• film screenings, meetings, tales of ethnographers, anthropologists, musicologists and musicians involved in traditional culture

A significant part of the events we organize in rural areas, thereby shifting the focus from the ‘presentation formula’, implying division between the performers and the audience, towards co-participation.

The initiatives taken within the project are also intended to be a boost to local community actions and to restoration of traditional customs (such as carol singing, playing traditional music), which once had an important function of integrating local communities.

The concept and project management: Rafał Foremski

FILM