Each grant holder, located in South and Central-Eastern Europe, will explore and reflect on one or more of the conference’s key panel topics, examining issues of polarisation from the perspective of their unique backgrounds and regional insights.
The first guest author to present an article is Darina Dilyanova Doncheva, Public Relations Specialist at Municipal Cultural Institute/Museum in Byala, Bulgaria. The words and opinions expressed are solely those of the author.
Let’s talk! How Bulgarian museums play a crucial role in bringing people together amidst growing divides
Modern day society is being bludgeoned into crisis after crisis. What has become today our new existential norm is to be constantly plunged into a new calamity while still striving to recover from another. As a result, fear and distrust have seeped so deeply that a severe societal division and polarization on crucial issues – economic, political, demographic, environmental and so on — has become a global phenomenon.
My country is no exception. The upcoming parliamentary election in Bulgaria this October will be the seventh in a raw for the last three years. Still not all hope is gone. As the political scientist Ivan Krastev comments for the Bulgarian cultural portal kultura.bg that our democracy may be currently driven into a political deadlock, yet has avoided ending up in a populist desert.
A key responsibility for keeping at bay the antagonistic extremes within our society can be credited to our cultural community. For Bulgarian museums, galleries, cultural institutes, theaters, etc. have never been afraid to talk for fear of being “too political”. On the contrary, these institutions have always been a part of shaping and responding to the shifting social-political landscapes within our country.
And they do so by stimulating and supporting the modern creative process in Bulgarian culture to deep and high levels of artistic thinking. In that regard Rumen Serafimov, curator of the art forum "Art as Opposition" from Varna City Art Gallery "Boris Georgiev", writes:
“What can art oppose actually... Can it resist the powerful material, financial and political drives, the immeasurable vices that have possessed the modern world? Hardly. But in the eternal battle for the human soul, which is the most important of all, it can play its saving role.”
