`Take a Breath of Nature!` is an organic place in our educational centre in rural area of Bicacel village, Lazareni Commune, Bihor where we want to arrange a beautiful artistic landscape with local medicinal plants, flowers, shrubs and other natural wide number of elements that have come together to create amazing shapes and features. We want to create a dream place where people can enjoy nature, near forest and get in touch with core forgotten feelings.
Local
Romania
Lazareni Commune, Bicacel village, Bihor county, Transylvania region
Mainly rural
It refers to a physical transformation of the built environment (hard investment)
No
No
Yes
As a representative of an organization, in partnership with other organisations
Name of the organisation(s): Asociatia de Teatru Experimental Clandestin Type of organisation: Non-profit organisation First name of representative: Sebastian Last name of representative: Barbalan Gender: Male Nationality: Romania If relevant, please select your other nationality: Italy Function: President Address (country of permanent residence for individuals or address of the organisation)<br/>Street and number: P-ta Emanuil Gojdu nr 39/I, Oradea, Bihor, Romania Town: Oradea Postal code: 410006 Country: Romania Direct Tel:+40 757 365 146 E-mail:crea.arta@gmail.com Website:https://experimentteatruclandestin.com/
Our organisation Experiment Teatru Clandestin manage an educational center, newly built in Bicacel village, which is formed by 5 cottages, an activity building, another building for accomodation and an old romanian house where we arranged an museum by creating artistic instalations with old romanian objects. These activity center has a 40 people accomodation capacity, located on a hil, near a big forest, a small lake and all this property is arround 2 hectars big. Near the activity center is the pasture where local animals live. Here on this place, as is freshly built, we intend to create a community for people interested in learning and non-formal education and to create bridges between different environments, to make different disciplines intertwine
as we are a cultural artistic organisation which relocate all the activities from city to rural area in order to connect non-formal education, artistic creation with nature and disadvantaged community.
Our target groups are people with fewer opportunities, youths, children, adults, as local community is disadvantaged and have lack of inclusion in the societal events. We intend to create for them a space suitable for growing where they have easy acces to education and good practices. That„s why we build here our activity center in an environment with low income because we start our intervention strategy in rural community. We intend to teach people a better lifestyle and way of thinking.
That`s why we think that arround our activity center, next to the cottages, as we have an area of 2500-3000 square meters undeveloped landscape we want to arrange a beautiful artistic landscape with local medicinal plants, flowers, shrubs and other natural wide number of elements that have come together to create amazing shapes and features. We think that this organic beautiful landscape architecture can have a huge impact on our particpants and local people from the community because it will be an example of good practice.
sustainable
ecology
artistic landscape
educational
biodiversity
This initiative is part of a big project, started last year, we already have built our educational center last year and we host over 300 people all year long for non-formal educational activities. Only the courtyard remain undeveloped and because we have a big field where we can intervene we want to arrange it into a beautiful landscape architecture with local medicinal plants, flowers, shrubs and other natural wide number of elements working with professional people with knowledge from a variety of fields (architecture, engineering, design, forestry, horticulture, etc.) and an interdisciplinary approach.
We intend to create a sustainable garden which will be a good environment for people to rest, learn, read or just relax their mind and spirits.
The whole initiative is sustainable beacuse we talk about outside organic garden using also medicinal local plants. What we think it will have the most impact on local community is the example that we will give of how to arrange their courtyards and also how to use medicinal plants in this arrangement. In this specific area, in the springtime there are about 3-4 weeks or more when all the medicinal plants are blowing and all the people present in thie area in thie period have a natural cleans of lungs and respiratory tract. So we want to make this a local value, to arrange a place where people come exactly for this. We encourage, by this initiative connection with nature and arranging the courtyards. This project aims to conserve and support local biodiversity and create quality green spaces, by restoring natural functioning habitats through the planting of local native species.
As we are an artistic cultural organisation we have studies in the field of aesthetics, arts and provoking to other people positive emotions so we intend to use all our knowledges and to imprint our unicity also in landscape architecture but also we intend to work with specialized people in permaculture, landscape, horticulture, gardening, forestry, design. Actually we want to create an organic environment also therapeutic not only by aesthetic but also by the use of midicinal plants (lavender, mints, and others) and because we want it in our already built activity center it will be an unique space where artistic cultural activities meet pharmaceutical botany, artistic landscape design and also positive, calm emotions and feelings.
Also we promote ecology and permaculture and encourage people to take care of nature.
Our whole intervention in the community has the objective of inclusion of disadvantaged people because here it`s a small village and people don`t have a social cultural life so our organisation create for them social events, like `Romania by hand` festival of traditions and customs and also social places for people to meet and spend their free time. Also these area is a rural area, there are a lot of fields, pasture, also each household has a big garden but people live it wild and they don`t use it even for growing vegetables. So we know that if we arrange a beautiful garden with local plants and local trees, people will be impressed and they will take our example. And also because we host in our activity center national and international participants they will also be impressed and will be impacted about this organic garden.
Because our educational center is in a small village, in rural area, near to forest this organic garden will have a huge impact on them and we will invite them to contribute to the arranging and maintain the natural habitat and arrangements of the beautiful garden. As I say before, our intervention in rural area started last year and we have already results from our strategy, the community, especially young people start to participate in our activities and to be implicated in our projects, so we think that bringing a natural, organic project in this complex that we created will be also educational but also will complete and fit our already built architectural complex. Our work until now was to built the infrastructure of our center and we didn`t have the possibility to arrange the landscape arround this educational complex, so this, for us and for the citizens will be a very good opportunity to value our local medicinal plants, bushes and trees, to know about each species because we want to make for every plant a small book with description, uses, therapeutic properties, benefits, useful parts of the plant, ways of care, in order for people to learn them and also to be inspired to plant them in their garden.
We intend also to give pharmaceutical botany lessons to the citizens and participants (visitors) of our garden and to guide them to arrange their gardens like this.
We are a cultural artistic organisation but we have staff with different specialization like: pharmacist, permaculture designer, landscape scenographer and architect and also in our strategy we work with other organization and companies specialized in different specific areas. Also, here in our commune, we have a good relation with forest district and city hall and they give us all the information about local plants, trees and how to care for them.
In this project particularly we collaborate with Beehave NGO from Constanta, Romania which have the mission to encourage the creation, development and reconstruction of functional natural ecosystems to maintain the balance necessary for a sustainable society and their vision is to contribute to building a world in which people play their part in a responsible way, in relation to the environment and for the purpose of self-preservation. Their values are transparency, responsibility, sustainability, quality Innovation. Beehave organisation fight against the sixth global extinction by creating, developing and rebuilding functional natural ecosystems to create a world in which humans play a responsible role towards nature.
We think that this partnership gives us a much good perspective on our initiative and help the project to have impactful results.
Also in our activity, Expeirment Teatru Clandestin try to the regeneration of natural ecosystems, and to preventing biodiversity loss through organizing hikings, camps for youths where we combine culture with nature. We also organize 3 Festivals in nature, near forest and we give to local people the opportunity to have cultural artistic activities next to their homes.
Regarding our already started initiative to build a complex educational activity center in rural area with purpose to combine art with nature we work with over 40 experts of different specializations like, architects, designers, economic experts, teachers, pharmacist, chefs, nutritionist, trainers, artists, school directors, permaculture experts and others, so we intend to keep this habitude and work with different experts on all our initiatives, especially when we implement this project of arranging the organic landscape.
We also want to work with a nutritionist, a biologist, a permaculture designer and pharmacist on this initiative `Take a Breathe of Nature` because this is our specific style in Experiment Teatru Clandestin that we interfere different kind of fields and specialists in order to make a complex final product even it`s an activity or a landscape architecture like in this case.
We like to bring a learning dimension in all of our activities and initiatives, that`s why we built this activity center, we also have here international volunteers from a different project (European Solidarity Corps) and also our organisation have accreditation on Erasmus+ youth field and we organise here youth exchange mobilities and youth workers mobilities. So, our place will be visited by many participants from all over the Europe and other countryes.
We also promote our local values and traditions by making bread in an old clay owen, embroider and weaving and also we have a good cooperation with villagers and our visitors/participants can see different local businesse like making our local drink, or lavender field or farm.
In this activity center we also have animals, a horse, a cow, ducks and chikens, so the participants can also interact with animals and use fresh eggs. The horse can be ride and we also have a green house where we plant vegetables and fruits.
So, we can say that we have a complex activity center and we need a beautiful natural arranged landscape.
We think that the innovative character is that this initiative ` Take a Breathe of Nature` is part of a big ensemble and it`s not only a beautiful garden arranged. Besides that it is a beautiful garden with medicinal plants and trees, it is also an educational place because of the courses we will organise there for the local people but also for the national and international participants. Also our volunteers will beneffit of this natural garden and will have the opportunity to learn local plants and also how to take care of plants.
We intend to make research for every plant and share information with the participants. Also these garden will be a divided into small little gradens arranged in different places in the area, arround the huts, arround the lake, next to the forest, next to the house and next to the green house. And because the field is on a hill, we can create interesting designs for these gardens and also we have a small valley with trees and bushes. it is a storu about this area, these 2 hectars area that we speak about, in the past all the villagers use this valley for throwing garbage and when the president of our organisation decide to move here and to clean it, people was against, so we organise here a traditional romanian festival `Romania de mana` to show to people that it can be a good place to use it for cultural activities, not as garbage area. So, when we will built our garden will take in consideration this history of the place and will clean it properly.
The first element that others can replicate is the garden itself, because it will be wisely arranged with local plants, relaxing areas for people and also learning materials. Other element that can be replicated can be the methodology of teaching about the plants, botany information and therapeutical properties of the plants and the benefits.
it can be also replicated the idea of a garden as a learning class, specially arranged for people to take botany and biology classes.
Also we can share our intervention plan and methodologyes.
In the beginning we will analise the soil, the plants, trees, bushes and also the animals which leaves here, we will collect every data and we will think about a plan. We will decide the gardening tools and procedures of irigation, we also make our own compost here in the community, so we can use natural nutrients for the garden and plants and of course we have menure because we have a lot of farms around. After, we will collect our materials, we make a team for working, with local people, volunteers, our staff from the organisation and we decide a calendar of working. We will decide also the period of the year when we can plant. After that we will divide the tasks and we`ll start to work. We will have the coordinator Beehave organisation which is expert in permaculture and architectural design and also together with Experiment Teatru Clandestin they will make an aestethical design for the garden and for the whole landscape.
We will have discusions and consultations with other experts, like pharmacist, nutritionist, biologist, horticulturist and our forest district and will take in consideration every advice and expertise. It will be a team work. All the documentation, the monitorization and the dissemination will be organised from the beginning and we`ll make pictures and videos with every step of the implementation.
In the final we will have all the datas and the plan of the landscape transformation and we can share it with the world.
This initiative is a perfect solution for people to reconnect with nature, to present a beautiful way of arranging their garden in their households and also to use medicinal plants for a healthy lifestyle. We want with this initiative to stop global warming and to encourage people to work more in nature during the seasons when it`s warm outside and also to teach their children green practices, like reading, relaxing and learning outside in nature, breathe healthier and how important it`s to have acces to nature and natural plants.
When we came to this land to open our activity center, next to the field, on the pasture, near forest there was the area where people throw away the garbage, so we talk with the mayor to clean the filed but he didn`t want to help us immediately, he tell us that we need to have a reson for cleaning the field, so we say that we`ll make there a frestival for local people with romanian traditions. Then he help us to clean the pasture and we organise our festival. Also all our property was full of garbage and we clean ourselves with trucks and backhoe.
After the cleaning of the field, we build our educational center and we show to local people that it`s better to be clean and also we buy animals and put them on the pasture and now everybody has animals on the pasture and we also tech them to install electric fense in order for animals to stay inside.
We contribute on developing new competences, firstly through our collaboration with Beehave organisation because they will come to us and we will talk together the plan and strategy of implementation and we will have learning by doing process and the second of all, after we understand some principles we will teach other visitors/participants what we`ve learned and also when we have a well arranged garden we will organise specific trainings for educators, teachers, trainers and also for young people and children. Our expertise is in educational field.
