Radio România Internațional

Tag: stories

  • The Bucharest Bookshops Center and its recent projects

    The Bucharest Bookshops Center and its recent projects



    Super stories from Bucharest is the title of an anthology that has been launched recently. It is the first book written by children and adolescents of Bucharest. It brings together stories that re-enliven the legends and the tales from the history of the city. The collection includes stories authored by the winners of the contest also dubbed Super stories from Bucharest. The contest was launched in early 2021.



    With the support of Bucharest Municipality and ARCUB, Romania’s longest-lasting chain of bookshops, the Bucharest Bookshops Company, printed a few thousand copies of the anthology titled Super stories from Bucharest. The book is given out for free in all 40 bookshops as part of the Bucharest Bookshops Company. The initiators of Super stories from Bucharest are the Bucharest Bookshops Company jointly with Headsome Communication. The initiator and the coordinator of the project, Oana Boca Stănescu, is the president of Headsome Communication.



    Oana Boca Stanescu:



    This book was born as part of an event staged by the Bucharest Bookshops Company. As far as I’m concerned, I have been and still am inspired by the activities staged by the Bucharest Bookshops Company, an outlet that has been on the book market for more than 71 years now, I am impressed by their success, the Bucharest Bookshops Company has succeeded to stay close to all book lovers from around the capital city. In 2020, the Bucharest Bookshops Company was getting ready to celebrate 70 years since their foundation and, since we have been jointly carrying cultural projects for quite some time now, we were planning a rather ambitious schedule. However, the pandemic broke out and all the planned events were no longer possible, but still, we succeeded to carry some of the events through. One such event was an initiative to plant trees in Bucharest, as a sign of the fact that the Bucharest Bookshops Company has been close to the readers in the capital city for almost three generations and the company holds dear the future generation as well. The event I’m speaking about was staged in the Youth Park, there we organized that action of planting trees. And that’s how I got to hear stories about the Vale of Tears, about a submerged church, about the Cocioc Lake in the Youth Park, while me and other people younger than myself realized we didn’t know much about those places. And we realized that, perhaps, the younger generations are not very familiar with the stories and legends of Bucharest either. And that’s how we thought to initiate this project, by means of which we sought to re-enliven the legends and the stories of Bucharest. And, without the support and the enthusiasm of the Bucharest Bookshops Company, as the project running as Super stories from Bucharest is Bucharest Bookshops Brand, we would not have been able to carry it through, to materialize it. Fortunately, for quite a few years now we have been witnessing a revival of the literature for children, we’ve got quite a few living authors who write literature for children. I think it is the most marvelous thing that can happen on a book market, which is rather poor, as if you want to train new generations of readers, you need to draw them to reading in due time



    Marieta Seba, the general manager of the Bucharest Bookshops Company, tells us how the project came into being.



    This project, just as Oana Boca Stănescu said, was born as part of the tree-planting event we organized, jointly with the Bucharest Bookshops Company. In 2020 we had set for ourselves the task of celebrating the Bucharest Bookshops Company’s 70 anniversary in a rather festive way, staging a couple of events and being more public and communication-centered. Because of the pandemic, it was no longer possible for us to implement our ideas, so our collaborators came up with this idea, that of planting trees in the Youth Park. It was an event that also drew children, who turned up in large numbers. We saw children were brimming with joy as they were taking part in the event, so we thought of marking the Bucharest Bookshops Company’s 70th anniversary staging more than one event for that. So, we also thought of getting a booklet brought out. And we do hope for all that to be just the beginning of a project, to be run along many years from now and to develop into a wider-scope project, capable of getting as many schoolchildren as possible involved. In everything we have achieved so far it was about a lot of passion, a lot of heart we put into it, as that is also our slogan. Out of love for the book. For us, those with the Bucharest Bookshops Company, the financial aspect has never been a priority, every time we tried to do interesting and creative things, capable of representing us, even though there wasn’t enough funding for that.



    Ioana-Alexandra Anastasiu, a pupil of Middle School number 280 in Bucharest, is one of the winners of the contest launched as Super Stories from Bucharest. Her story about the Capsa House has been included in the anthology that has recently been launched by the the Bucharest Bookshops Company with a similar title, Super Stories from Bucharest.



    Ioana-Alexandra Anastasiu:



    I registered, jointly with my Religion teacher, for an optional course themed Travelers through Bucharest. And during each class we were discussing the legends and the history of the buildings of Bucharest, so much so that, as soon as I’ve learned about this contest, Super Stories from Bucharest, I made my mind up to participate straight away, as I am passionate about the Romanian Language and History and I saw that as a fine opportunity for me to express my passions. I opted for writing about the Capsa House as it is one of Bucharest’s most elegant and most sumptuous buildings, it is a building that, in time, was visited by many personalities, especially at the time of La Belle Epoque. I have always admired this building and I really got my kicks out of being given the opportunity to write about it.



    The project was successful and managed to arouse the interest of children and adolescents, so the organizers sought to strengthen the initiative and, in early 2022, they initiated the second edition of the story-writing contest.


    (EN)




  • The National Museum of Contemporary Art in Bucharest

    The National Museum of Contemporary Art in Bucharest

    The National Contemporary Art Museum in Bucharest has
    never ceased to surprise us. After unconventional exhibition inaugurations,
    some of which were allegedly way too disputed and collections that have been
    renewed every six months or monster installations impressing visitors as soon
    as they step into the museum, as of late caught up indoors because of the pandemic,
    the National Contemporary Art Museum has come up with projects meant to get
    children closer to the museum. That’s how a couple of projects have emerged as
    of late. Among them, Contemporary Art from Plankton to Intergalactic Flight,
    actually made of several workshops meant to help art lovers understand the
    exhibition of the National Contemporary Art Museum Collection. Then there’s
    also Watching History. 1947-2007, as well as projects focusing on where
    contemporary art hails from and what its sources are, in general. A Night at
    the Museum, workshops tailored to suit the needs of the little ones, staged in
    a bid to help them understand, in a friendly formula, the National Contemporary
    Art Museum Collection themed Watching
    History. 1947-2007. Then there’s also Art through Correspondence, a project
    bringing together the children and the elderly, facilitating the correspondence
    between generations.




    There is another project we’re going to be dealing
    with in detail, themed A weekend at the National Museum of Contemporary Art online:
    reading evenings for the little ones. On a weekly basis, the project seeks to
    offer for reading a title from the library of the museum as a means of arousing
    the little ones’ interest in reading, art, as well as in dialogue.




    Astrid Bogdan is a librarian with the National
    Contemporary Art Museum. She told us the story behind the project.






    Late into the previous year, jointly with my
    colleagues, we laid the foundation stone of what we’ve themed Reading evenings
    at the National Museum of Contemporary Art. And what we do, actually, is
    gather, the little ones and the elderly, on Fridays, at 7 pm, to read stories
    from our library, the library of the museum. Taking one step after the next, we
    have tried to corroborate those reading sessions, focusing on the reading
    proper, with little graphic interventions made by book illustrators, as well as
    with musical interventions, so that the textual intervention may have sound and
    color attached to them, why not? We can
    thus have the opportunity to discover some of the titles even while their
    authors are doing the reading. There is no age limit for that, since our
    workshops are inclusive. Also, we want to take the well- established custom
    further, that of the tales told by the fireside, since the program is free of
    charge. And the advantage of working online on a permanent basis is having
    participants at local but also at international level.




    Such a project is a support for book authors, Romanian
    as well as foreign.




    Astrid Bogdan:




    We also dedicate some of the reading evenings to the
    books tackling the topic of the recovery of children diagnosed with autism or
    with other growth problems, children with certain special disabilities. The
    start we had for our project was kind of bumpy, we began in December, back then
    the project was titled Rolling astray on board a tramway and we continued
    with the title ‘Introtale’ which gathered a great many readers around it. All
    this time we have tried to bring the authors closer, so much so that on Fridays
    we have one author reading from their own work.




    We asked Astrid Bogdan if the reading sessions brought
    together many participants.


    Astrid Bogdan:




    There are evenings, and there are evenings. There were
    evenings when we’ve got 30 people taking part, there were evenings with many
    more participants, we even had something to the tune of 70. We have been trying
    to stage the event one week after the next, opening up the evenings to the
    little ones, so we opted for a maximum number of 25 participants, and whenever
    we had more people coming in, we staged another reading evening separately, on
    a different day.




    Having taken part in the sessions, people kept sending
    encouraging messages, which, alongside the growing number of prospective
    participants, gave an impetus to the organizers so that they could take take the project further and
    keep searching for different and new, original titles. The library is open
    Monday to Friday, from 13.30 to 17.30 pm, and on the first Monday of every
    month, also from 13.30 to 17.30 pm. Astrid Bogdan said that, as soon as the National
    Contemporary Art Museum library was discovered, quite a few people turned up,
    who were willing to explore it.




    Astrid Bogdan:




    And I had no choice other than doing the reading for
    them in the library and that’s what prompted me to keep my hopes alive that at
    one point we could stage those reading sessions on the museum’s rooftop, when
    that is officially allowed. Yet we will stay online as well, since there are a
    great many users who opt for being with us from their hometown, and by that I
    ‘m not speaking about cities from across Romania, but also about cities from
    abroad. We believe that any youngster, through reading and art, can have a
    freedom of choice, nay, they can form certain genuine customs and habits, as we
    pledge for stories that are not prescribed.

    And that is an invitation worth taking in the
    evenings.