ESC: Rural Development Project - Nature Academy!

The Cultural Association Experiment Teatru Clandestin (E.T.C.) is an independent cultural company founded in 2004 in Oradea born by the need of creating an environment for theatre students from the University of Oradea, because at that time, the University doesn`t offer proper conditions for students who learn theather, and the association create workspace and theater classes especially for them, new opportunities and remove barriers of communication between University and students. ETC was founded as a manifest to the public institutions. From the beggining of our activity in association we developed The Research Center ETC which offers a series of instructive and creative workshops of performing arts. By bringing together young people, from artistic and entreprenurial environment, aiming to enhance the engagement of young people and organisations in accessible and high-quality solidarity activities, primarily volunteering. As a means to strengthen solidarity, we developed a Festival `Gala Traficantului de Cultura International (GTCI)` which promote young artists and unites all kind of arts and the specificity of this festival is that we haunt abandoned spaces with historical importance and we transform them with art. GTCI, in all editions unites artists from 7 countries like Italy, Belgium, Romania, Hungary, Spain, Germany, Poland; we have over 2000 participants; and encourage young people to become active citizens, agents of solidarity and positive change for communities and engaged over 600 volunteers in the activities. The main occupation of ETC was to provide different kind of courses for children, youths and adults; courses like: theatre classes, philosophy, art education, piano lessons, fashion design, ecological education, canto, cinema, acting and we organize different events, conferences and two Festivals. Also we produce theater performances and participate in several international competitions and won different awards. Over time, we worked with 3600 participants. This activities are sustained, on average, four days/week for over ten years now. We have to mention that in all our activities we promote and encourage green practices, environmental protection, sustainability aiming to raise awareness about environmental sustainability and enabled behavioural changes for consumption habits and lifestyles. Our intervention in this direction was by going on camps, hikings and coordonate youths and over 100 volunteers to plant trees, clean forests, clean fields, we organize the local libraries, we evacuate and cleaned of disused objects rural buildings. Mostly of our environmental intervention was in rural area of Lazareni, an 80 square kilometers community due to our property there. Over time, the concerns of the association have changed depending on the evolution of the staff but also on the need or desire to combine the performing arts and artistic creations with outdoor activities; so we created a second direction: a ten year "Rural Development Project - Nature Academy!", which aims to support a series of cultural-educational activities in nature: creative tourism, courses, camps, hiking and other actions in rural and mountain areas, focusing on social inclusion, solidarity among young and adult people and awareness of personal and local resources. In this direction we opened an zootechnical exploitation two years ago and we have thirteen cows, four goats, a horse, chicken and ducks. We realise that the rural community have several needs and problems, like lack of solidarity, poverty, individuals performing poorly in education and training systems, fewer opportunities, anti-social behaviours, low standard of living. The artistic area work with specific methods with valuable elements which makes available to the public an educational concept that involves a method of approaching the discipline through direct interaction, freely and openly, offering a program that takes into account the degree of development of each participant according to age and certain needs related to the evolution of speech, physical and mental mobility, self-knowledge, integration, awareness of skills and their gradual improvement. That`s why, now the specific objective of ETC is to provide children, young people and adults with easily accessible opportunities for engagement in solidarity activities that induce positive societal changes, most focused on the rural area of Lazareni, Transylvania, Romania, (an 80 square kilometers area) because we discover valuable resources like historical places, hemp cultivation, woven skills history and many more. We aim to generate initiatives which are an complex sustainable system in which the participants can develop their skills, have more knowledges about an ecological way of living. Our main goal is to create a complex sustainable circuit of non-formal educational, touristic places along the 80 square kilometers area of Lazareni in which we can perform different kind of activities.