Marilena Chiriță, Metropolitan Library of Bucharest
The Cultural Agora @ Your Library project has started on January 23, 2015 being implemented by the National Association of Libraries and Librarians in Romania (ANBPR), in affiliation with Jazzmontor AS Norway and REPLIKA Cultural Association, financed through EEA Grants 2009-2014, the PA17 / RO13 Program Promoting of diversity in culture and art within the European cultural heritage in Romania (www.fonduri-diversitate.ro).
The project, which sets itself to identify and highlight the cultural specificity of ethnic minorities in Romania through the Digital Storytelling technique, has been for me an opportunity to develop from both professional and personal point of view.
The Cultural Agora@Your Library experience offered me the opportunity to get practical information on completing the digital story and supplemented my knowledge on the training process with groups of participants, very different from ethnic culture, experiences, and age point of view.
As a librarian-trainer for Cultural Agora @ Your Library I realized the importance of sharing personal stories and the positive influence that they have on the cultural heritage of ethnic communities.
Cultural Agora @ Your Library offered me the opportunity to get to know amazing people, interested in the cultural diversity and stimulated my curiosity in what traditions, customs, specific life means for each ethnic group.
It also gave me the opportunity to work with an international expert in the digital story making technique, with colleagues from Metropolitan Library of Bucharest and the county public libraries, but also with a team of professional artists and producers of theater, from whom I took examples of good practice, which sparked my further interest to deepen the process of creating digital stories and movie making.
The indisputable benefits in both the knowledge aquired and the networking, determined me to get involved in coordinating and promoting an ongoing Digital Story Course for seniors, within the Metropolitan Library Bucharest, because I believe it is fundamentally necessary that any person willing to share the experience, to have the opportunity to receive the support needed in order to create a story that conveys “glimpses of life” to the next generations.
