new opportunities for young filmmakers. We will utilize each other’s strengths in further professionalizing our art scene. Sofia will benefit from Lecce’s experience in art therapy and entrepreneurship in prisons and in working with people with special needs and abilities while Lecce will use Sofia’s cultural regional mobility platforms and artists to improve their own regional cultural spillover.
Ruse). We have encouraged programs of major Sofia festivals in these cities. To guarantee mutual cross-pollination, in this bid we have included co-production projects with Varna Summer Festival, the Regional History Museum in Plovdiv, the Dixie Jazz Fest in Veliko Tarnovo. We have also developed on-the-road art projects (such as Re-Orient Express), which will involve other bidding cities.
Lecce will also partner with Blagoevgrad on a joint project with the local universities and historical museums on European student migration exposition.
If we are awarded the title, the four cities will be transformed from competitors into collaborators and we are committed to new cooperation in the following areas:
Siena and Sofia will continue the collaboration on the Regional Academy for Cultural Managers, making it European with the participation of the universities of Sofia, Siena, Gimarães, Pilsen, Umeå and Riga.
Two-way artistic program participation. We have identified the theme and metaphor of the crossroads as key in all bids, including those from the first round. The theme captures well all cities’ challenges and potential.
We will also work together on performative artistic archiving of the memory and practices of people and communities left Under the Radar.
We will support coordinated local artistic implementation of the components, thus forming a nation-wide program with broader involvement of cultural operators, artists and new audiences.
Another joint initiative, based on our joint participation in an FP7 funded project, is Europeana for Citizens, broadening opportunities for cultural participation and digital co-creation. We will also further develop our projects Muzeiko and Leonardo 500, both based on the concept of edutainment, to a European wave of Open Playgrounds. Sofia and Cagliari will join efforts in the area of creative and cultural industries development. Sofia Video Gaming will be further integrated with the University of Cagliari Hackathon model meeting of computer scientists for a session of collaborative programming. Cagliari and Sofia will work together on literature and translation, with a special focus on the young authors. Our Translation Hub has natural connections with Cagliary’s Young European Literature contest and by connecting them we will scale up this line of work. in case your city gets the title, do you plan to cooperate with the other bidding cities in your country which have been pre-selected?
Sofia has already committed itself to cooperation with the other Bulgarian bidding cities. Sofia does not wish to have a monopoly on creativity, innovation, cultural diversity or economic growth, but, on the contrary, to share opportunities, knowledge and resources with Varna, Veliko Tarnovo and Plovdiv. This commitment has been consistently pursued, as for instance by providing Sofia public funding to cultural operators from these cities for cultural exchanges or coproduction (Varna Summer Festival, Plovdiv Theatre, March Music Days Festival in
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Sharing Sofia
We have included a national Crossroads project in the program, which will be allocated €2,5 mln. We propose to set up a curator team with one person from each of the four cities to manage the project. We will also use effectively twoway mobile and touring cultural events, structures and artistic residencies. We will streamline this process as of 2015. National and international sharing of knowledge and growth through peer reviews, staff exchanges, joint monitoring and evaluation of cultural impact, capacity building. This approach will contribute to guaranteeing the artistic independence and the quality of our program, its transparent and efficient management, and the transfer of know-how and common capacity building. This program will take place between 2015 and 2018. Internal and external communications and marketing to promote tourism, and to foster national and European institutional collaborations and social networks with the participation of the Bulgarian cultural sector. Joint marketing is a win-win solution for all cities, as it attracts more visitors, while giving a boost to local self-esteem and creativity. We are ready to expand our 2019 communications into a Sharing Bulgaria tourist and marketing program to include all bidding cities with their offerings. We are committed to launching this in 2015, upon the final approval of the nomination. We are aware that 2019 presents an opportunity for the country and we are committed to contributing to an exemplary experience and to maximizing the effect.