Stand Art Association
Bulgaria Русе (Ruse) Ruse
www.standartbg.com
Stand Art Association is a non-governmental organization specialized in arts, culture and civil society empowerment. Our staff includes experts of different fields and expertise, consolidated by the common goal to build a responsible, informed and active civil society.
Our initiatives aim at enriching cultural life and presenting innovative practices in the field of arts to the audience. By mixing, sharing and applying methods and techniques of the arts we attempt to achieve more impactful and effective results developing socially competent and empowered communities. We put the focus of our interests on adolescents who we believe are the main driver of change in modern society. We put great effort into engaging more young people in the processes of social change and improvement by giving them skills to cope with the challenges of today’s world.
Our method of work combines techniques from stage arts with empirical research and analysis to assess the needs of target groups and the impact of our activities on them. Our work with students is the key driver for our motivation to initiate and take part in projects that boost their civic self-awareness and social competences. Sharing their success stories has become a mission for our team. What is more, our experience points that a substantial part of the students that participated in our projects come back to join our subsequent initiatives, which is a direct indicator for their involvement and interest.
The members of our organization are professionals in fields like stage arts, education, research and analysis. Our team includes 10 people with relevant expertise that would be of utmost importance in the process of developing an educational programme about forum theatre for the needs of combating xenophobia.
Vanya Georgieva – Chairman of Stand Art Assoc., a sociologist with 10+ years of experience in the field of social research, impact assessments and evaluation practices. She has plenty of experience leading research projects with EU funding. As a PhD student, she currently specializes in policy-making and result-based policy assessment in the field of culture and EU multi-level governance. Her dissertation is on good governance of cultural policies on a municipal level which gives her a rich perspective on the cultural context that can be utilized for multidisciplinary projects.
Ivaylo Nenov is the key expert in forum theatre who is involved in this project. He is an actor and a professional theatre director. He has more than 10 years of experience in the field of professional theatre. As an actor Nenov has played in several national theatre institutions in Bulgaria – Youth theatre “Nikolai Binev”, Sofia, Drama and Puppet Theatre “Konstantin Velichkov”, Pazardzih, Drama Theatre “Sava Ognyanov”, Ruse. He has graduated from the National Academy of Theatre and Film Arts “Krastio Sarafov” as a Master in theatre directing and then specialized directing for drama theatre in the National University of Theatre and Film “I.L.Caragiale”, Bucharest. Ivaylo has created and directed a number of theatre performances, some of which are based on his own dramatizations. In the meantime, he has developed additional skills and expertise in the field of improvisational and forum theatre by attending and then organizing himself improvisational training and working groups. He has experience with adolescents’ training aimed at the needs and requirements of today’s communication culture.
Tatyana Alahverdzieva is part of the team, responsible for accounting and project management assignments. She has plenty of experience working on projects with EU funding in the field of arts and culture.
