From 8 to 11 of August 2024 the third edition of the OPEN BUZLUDZJA Festival was held in Bulgaria, in the Municipality of Kazanlak, one of the ARCHETHICS partner.
The festival gathers public support for the preservation and opening of the Buzludzha monument as a place for art, culture and history, attracting families, young people, new audiences from all over Europe to delve into the history of this controversial heritage.
Buzludzha monument, originally named “Memorial House of the Bulgarian Communist Party at Buzludzha Peak” has a profound significance to Bulgarian history and national identity, due to the dramatic and diverse events that have taken place there since the mid-19th century.
The monument represents a dissonant heritage site as it was built for glorifying the Bulgarian Communist Party, opened in August 1981 and closed in 1989. During the Monument’s eight years of use it was visited by more than 2 million people, serving as a political museum and ceremonial venue of the Communist Regime. Today, from one side, it is a symbol of a conflict between people holding different views about the recent past and from the other, a symbol of free will, art and curiosity for the young generation and the foreigners.
In 2018 the monument was recognised by Europe’s largest cultural heritage organisation “Europa Nostra”, as one of the 7 Most Endangered cultural sites in Europe.
In 2020, thanks to the work of the Buzludzha Foundation and a group of young volunteer architects and restorers, a series of actions to preserve the mosaics insied the buildings began.
The theme of this Festival edition was “Memories from the Future”, precisely to communicate to the public the desire to build a great cultural event that starts from a controversial past in which to recover collective memories, to imagine a common future.
During the 3 days event, workshops, live music, theatre, talks and exchange of good practices were organised for childern, families, young people, Eu experts.
Inside the Forest Stage on Saturday 10th August, a representative of the Municipality of Cesena, Lead partner of the APN ARCHETHICS , held a lecture to share the URBACT IV participatory approach for the valorisation of European dissonant heritage and the 4 ARCHETHICS’s dimensions and challenges (Architecture, History, People, Ethics).
For ARCHETHICS the Buzludzha festival represents a model of participation and co-design on how it is possible, in a remote and complex place like this, to build a cultural platform that tries not to lose the memory (even difficult) of our past, to the tune of good music.