Celebration event in Romania

Following the main activities organised within Work Package 3 – Common Spaces in Roma Communities, one deliverable assumed by the West University of Timisoara was the organizing of a celebration event, meant to popularize the activities that took place within this work package and to present the educational and artistic activities that took place within the  

Initially, the event was planned to be held in May 2020 (around Europe Day), as an open-air activity, that should have taken place at the headquarters of the West University of Timisoara. However, due to COVID-19 spreading, the pandemic and the strict regulations about public gatherings that ensued it, the activity (strictly correlated with the completion of the murals – D3.6) had to be postponed.

Because, after the completion of the murals (in October 2020), the regulations regarding the public gatherings were still in place and the Romanian authorities went back and forth on the opening of schools (which raised a lot of problems regarding the possibility of children/students to attend it), we had to find a way to change the format of the event from an on-site to an on-line format. The preparations for the organizing of the event had to start all over again, and the event was re-designed.

Finally, the event was held at the beginning of 2021, on January 29^th, starting with 6:00 p.m. The celebration was organized as a livestream event on the Facebook platform and was hosted by the Facebook page of the Faculty of Sociology and Psychology of the West University of Timisoara.

The event lasted approx. 2 hours, was designed in the fashion of a TV show, and consisted in:

– the presentation of the project;

– the presentation of the activities within the WP3;

– a video montage with presentation of the murals and testimonials from the representatives of the two schools that were the „beneficiaries” of the two murals, the children/students involved in the activities and the volunteers that helped with the implementation of the activities;

– interviews with some of the experts that organized the workshops and one of the artists that created the two murals;

– a musical performance provided by an instrumental band and various artists which interpreted some traditional Roma songs, but also contemporary music.

The event was previously advertised and, therefore, benefited of a satisfactory level of attention from a large and diverse audience (students, teachers, local stakeholders etc.).

During its 2 hours’ livestream duration, the event gathered over 1.000 views, but its popularity continues to raise, while it is still available of the Facebook page of the Faculty of Sociology and Psychology of the West University of Timisoara.

The feedback of the audience during the event was positive and complimentative: the attendants expressed their interest in finding more details about the project and its other activities, as well as in finding more about the opportunities for similar initiatives provided by the Rights, Equality and Citizenship Funding Programme of the EU.    

The livestream of the event can be accessed at the following address: https://www.facebook.com/fsp.uvt/videos/3343604679077527 or directly on the Facebook page of the Faculty of Sociology and Psychology at https://www.facebook.com/fsp.uvt/ .