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Today, we conclude our last public event for the year. Exhibitions turned out very fruitful about contacts with new people who are interested in the topics and needs we are preoccupied with.

Unfortunately, the gallery guys didn’t want us to be in their way and we couldn’t really meet our visitors but on Friday I decided to persist. For 3 hours I met a retired teacher who worked 20 years in a kindergarten in Stolipinovo, a young couple from the Stolipinovo who were really keen to get involved in initiatives with arts and culture in their community, and a recent young teacher in a minority school in Sofia who is trying to break out of the traditional system and invited us to help her with new initiatives for her students there.

Interestingly, both the local couple and the retired Bulgarian teacher made a similar point to me, maybe influenced by our Vol. 4 exhibit. They shared stories about how people in the neighbourhood always try to do something nice for you. The teacher told me how she noticed that when she was getting a coffee on the street in Stolipinovo, the person always put for her half a spoon more ground coffee. When she thanked for that, the woman said “Of course – for the mualima! Now you are going to teach our kids whole day!”

(I happen to know from Arabic that “mualimah” means “teacher”.)