Goals

Problem statement:

Bolnisi streets and open air spaces are passive and devoid of life. Most of the young people here complain about the lack of educational, entertaining and cultural activities. However, oftentimes they do not have a clear vision or initiatives to change this. This small town has internet connection and a TV station, but people use internet to mostly visit the entertaining websites and watch entertaining TV shows. Most of the population do not show interest into or are not aware of enriching cultural, educational programs, public lectures, films and concerts and various historic, documentary and classical video and photo chronicles. The most popular websites are those of online betting, games and other low quality entertaining programs. Hanging out in the streets to kill time is a popular pastime here. The streets are seen as a space to waste time. And there is that classical phrase "you cannot learn anything good in the street", or "a street's boy or street's girl", "why do you behave this bad, are you in the street?". These phrases demonstrate that people disrespect and distrust street as a public space. In reality street is an important mechanism to exchange information but it depends on the citizens what kind of information accumulates there and is exchanged. In Georgia, including in Bolnisi, people have a problem of direct communication and dialogue in families, educational institutions or public institutions. Therefore, the streets are viewed as a stage of protests, where protests migrate to: because of the stereotype that the street belongs to nobody. This is why the streets are the targets of excessive garbage, mental and physical pollution. The Soviet ideologists as well as commerce-oriented marketing industry have long ago realised that the street is an important space to communicate to people (who would publish posters, banners, quotes on mosaics etc). We want this space to change. We want cultural-educational information to take over the street space.

Proposed Solution:

Our solution is innovative. In particular, I and my friends will arrange special walls for screening interesting TV program and various educational and creative videos using a projector in the centre of Bolnisi, in the old German district. There will be several parallel screening in the streets, which among others will include:
1. TV Programs: artarea breaking news, ID, Vanity Fair, Green Zone, TransMission, Comunicator, Interpretation, Other Music, The City Talks, Urban Stories.
2. Public lectures from the following series: (Street academy), Tbilisi Tour and other various university video lectures which are available on the internet about literature, history, architecture, civil activism.
3. Old and modern Georgian films touching some topical social issues with the help of the national cinema centre of Georgia.
4. Photo and video chronicles of the national archive and Parliament’s national library project “Digital photo chronicles” which will generate people’s interest and more interaction with Georgia’s recent history.
5. Videos of live concerts and innovative projects. We want the youth to become familiar with the cultural movements in the world and get inspired to do something cool in Bolnisi too.
6. Open-air presentations on different topics (speakers can be invited in advance or can be spontaneous.
7. We will translate a portion of the English –language materials and dub them in Georgian.
8. We will occasionally invite well known speakers, a lecturer, a film/theatre director, a musician, art critic etc to make small instructions before screening. This is for more lively engagement. Some photo-video materials.

Sustainability:

The initiative is going to continue for years and will be held in good weather in evening hours. There are several factors which guarantee the sustainability: 1) our great desire to see something interesting happen on the weekends in Bolnisi street. We want to inspire people and demonstrate more positive examples, interesting materials and experience of civic activism. We will acquire potential partners and civil activists. 2) The devotion and commitment of our initiative group, our voluntary work for the cause since 2014 when we campaigned for the restoration of the cinema and collected 1000 signatures for a petition. The result is that the cinema is now transferred to the local municipal entity’s property and the designs are being produced now. On top of this, we take a credit for organizing various other events: mobilized volunteers to clean three big public buildings (cinema, glass building and an abandoned railway station which are now used for film screenings. 3) an important factor for sustainability is that the present initiative requires contribution and investment of energy by volunteers at the beginning (painting, buying inventory, cleaning territory) and then on the weekends we will only transport a projector and the equipment, which we will be happy to do and have experience of doing this. Around 30-40 young people are usually involved in our clean-up activities as they believe that we can make change happen. 4) The old German districts of Bolnisi is the part with unique architectural history and it should be used more actively and functionally. But neither the local government nor the population manage to enliven it and turn it into an attractive space for tourists and locals. Our project will be a good way to invigorate the streets, to create a space for people to grow.