and the economic stagnation, those areas are now derelict. 20% of those facilities are in a close proximity to the city center which creates vast disruption of the urban fabric and leads to the desire of city officials to redevelop those areas. Regeneration of six of them is suggested according to Sofia’s Master Plan. (http://kab-so.com/archives/5753) While top-down gentrification is already intentioned for some of the territories, others are stuck in the threshold between past and future uses and temporary cultural activities could potentially fill this time gap and propose new paths of development relying on bottom-up practices.
Built Assets
Sofia Municipality has an existing set of city owned property that is left inefficiently used or totally neglected. On the other hand artists and cultural organizations have a strong need of places to work and express themselves. This statement is supported both from a poll released to the creative industries and interviews with city representatives. The city officials admit that there is a lack of thorough database of the potential spaces. In order to identify all of the prospective temporary use properties, a research of the online database of city owned assets is performed. Additional suggestions are taken from articles on the topic of temporary creative uses. For the specific location with a linked picture, representative of the current state of the buildings, one may refer to map 2.2. The map includes only buildings located in the city core and its immediate surroundings, because according to the performed theoretical
research and its case studies, those are the more beneficial areas for temporary uses development. All of the buildings on the map are assessed based on certain criteria, defined as an outcome of the theoretical frame. Those factors are separated in two main groups according to the scale they operate in- urban and architectural and are hereby described. The table below presents the assessment of potential places for cultural cluster development.
Artists’ vision
To be able to provide facilities and spaces in compliance with the needs of the creative communities, the wishes of the artists are to be assessed as well. Therefore, a poll regarding those matters was released to the cultural sector in Sofia. The study was made as a part of the project “Sofia Shared Spaces, in which I am working with “Transformers” Association and Center for Non-Formal Education and Cultural Activities (ALOS). The poll was released and filled in on-line. To maximize the representativeness of the study, were selected various target groups: NGOs, government, business and funders folk centers, informal groups and individual artists. Their selection was made based on the following criteria: activity and frequency of performances and organized events; received funding for project management in the field of culture and arts in the period 2009 – 2013. For participation in the survey were asked:
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