Arts Lab 6.0: Savanephone Riand - Month 6

This is already the last month of the project. We started the month with the French institute events, where we had 3 days of exhibitions and workshops. Even though it seemed a bit like the public only cared about the workshops, this event was well organized and it was nice to see all of our previous work for the museums. 

Then we had our 4th exhibition in the house for the Cucuteni museum. I felt like it was the best exhibition we had in the house, everyone worked so hard for it. It was a mess in the house for a week before the exhibition and we could see everyone working in one spot of the house. I think everyone did his/her best artwork. Then, the next few days till today, we mostly planned the events of this last month, and worked on what is left to us. I finished my game for the Rroma exhibition in Ion Creanga, and I hope the kids will like to see their own drawings, theirself, in a game they can play.

It’s a bit weird to plan this last month. I feel that the end of the project is very close, and sometimes I feel I will never finish everything I plan to do by the end of it. But it makes me both motivated and happy, because it’s the last month. I want to do more and see the limits of what I can do, either in a creative way or just as a human. I don’t want to have a lot of free time in this last month because I will feel I didn’t do enough. 

I plan to do my personal project related to the shelter of Podu Iloaiei, and I hope I will manage to do it in time. Also, I think I will finish, or I hope, all the procedures for Cappuccino by the end of March. 

I don’t really know how I feel right now, about the project ending. I’m both happy, relieved, and sad at the same time, and it makes me want to do more in this month. I want to feel that I really brought something to the community, and I don’t want to leave this project with the feeling of being useless, or stuck with some negative ideas of how I felt these last months. I want to enjoy my last month, with every moment I’ve been through, with everyone I have lived with, and also with the community I met here. 

When I go back to France next month, I will try to get back my job with the children, while I will try to figure out my dream job, or jobs. I think I don’t realize yet how important this project is to me, and how it will affect my personal and professional life, but I know I gained so much more experience in everything by being there, as a volunteer artist in Targu Frumos, than doing whatever I was doing in France, and I will remember this town, and the people I lived, and worked with forever. 

Report written by Savanephone Riand, she's from France and she's one of the 14 volunteers participating in Arts Lab 6.0, a project co-funded by the European Union through the European Solidarity Corps program.