Ms. Catherine Cullen, President of the global organization AGENDA 21 for Culture, a network of cities and their Culture departments, recently visited the Bulgarian city of Gabrovo, which was selected to be one of the world’s pilot cities to implement culture as one of the 4 main pillars of sustainable development. Gabrovo was selected alongside Bogotá (Colombia), Belo Horizonte (Minas Gerais, Brazil), Mexico City (México) Concepción (Chile), Gabrovo (Bulgaria), province of Jeju (Republic of Korea), Talca (Chile) and Vaudreuil-Dorion (Quebec, Canada) (see more here http://www.agenda21culture.net/index.php/newa21c/pilot-cities). During her visit in Gabrovo, Ms. Cullen visited the first Bread House in the world and was impressed by the model of the mix of a social enterprise and community cultural center. Indeed, the Bread House was listed in Ms. Cullen’s report as one of the three main and most innovative cultural initiatives and models that could be shared from Gabrovo with the world. Here below is the excerpt from the report:
“A very interesting project has emerged known as the Bread Houses led by local, independent group of artists. Using some community houses as a base, a team of artistic and social actors has created a unique way of bringing different people together: socially disadvantaged, old, young, or those suffering from illness or a handicap. The idea is to invite people to learn to make bread together, bridging ethnic, cultural, socio-economic and religious divides. This in turn leads to various innovative multi-disciplinary art projects. The team is also engaged in a lively international network, “The Bread Houses Network” that has partners throughout the world, and defines its collective bread-making and accompanying art forms as sustainable ecological education. The leading, artistic team of this project had many questions to ask about the newAgenda 21 for Culture as it is totally engaged in, I would say, all four pillars of sustainable development and keen to continue developing cross cutting innovative actions.”
AGENDA 21 for Culture prepared a report featuring the Bread Houses Network here: http://agenda21culture.net/
