Arts Lab 6.0: Sinem Sağdıç - Month 5

Salut! Greetings from the fifth month of the project.

This month, we did a lot and traveled a lot. Luca and I organized a six-day workshop at "Ion Creangă" Middle School. We worked on paper crafts, including collage, vision boards, agamograph, and a project about "My Future Home". Normally, we were supposed to focus on the future of the Rroma community, especially Rroma children, but there were no Rroma children in our workshop. However, we still discussed their future and the future of Rroma children with the other students and completed the workshop.

This month, all the volunteers had to attend the ESC mid-term meeting in Bucharest. Before taking the night train, we had a Latvian night. We had fun, but we were also a bit sad because Katrina and Kristers had decided to leave the project. After the event, we rushed to the train station. I wish I could say we had a great time on the train, but honestly, we mostly slept :). To be honest, I thought the mid-term meeting would be boring, but it was the opposite. Everyone had their own room in the hotel, the facilitators were energetic and creative, the food was great, and most importantly—the water machine at the hotel! We kept talking about how good the water was at every meal!!! We also celebrated Salma’s birthday during the meeting. It was great to meet other volunteers from different regions of Romania. I also met people from my own country.

Outside the meeting, we did many things. One of the most memorable moments was going to a playground at night and playing like kids. Another fun night was playing Uno with the girls. We kept making up new rules. If you want to risk your friendships, play Uno :).

After leaving Bucharest, five of us girls traveled to Brașov and stayed there for three days. We mostly explored like tourists.

In the following days, we returned to Târgu Frumos and started preparing for the exhibition. Since I had already finished my personal artwork, I was more relaxed compared to the others. What worried me was the interactive part of the exhibition. On the exhibition day, a lot of people came—it was much more crowded than the previous ones. People loved the giant collage I made, which I honestly didn’t expect. For the interactive part, I used my own tarot cards to calculate people’s soul cards and explained their meanings. They really liked it and said the interpretations fit perfectly. This was one of the most enjoyable exhibitions for me. I didn't enjoy my VR exhibitions as much as this one.

After the exhibition, things became difficult for me. There were moments when I felt overwhelmed. I had to prepare for Turkish Night and also work on a project to find new volunteers. I was happy to do the first one, but the second project didn’t feel like mine at all. I would have done it just for the sake of doing it, and I didn’t want that. The last time I felt this way was in Turkey when I was forced to do work that wasn’t related to my field, and I had no choice to say no. So, I decided to step away from the volunteer recruitment project and instead joined Salma and Yasser’s residency to help them.

That same week, we had Czech Night. It was a relaxed and enjoyable evening. My night, however, was much more chaotic :). I spent the whole day in the kitchen cooking. Everyone kept saying how calm I looked while cooking—if only they could see inside my head! Since we invited local volunteers, I had to prepare more food than usual. The people at home helped me as much as they could. After dinner, I showed videos about Turkey and the street cats and dogs there. Then, we played a Kahoot quiz I had prepared. I also invited Sara from the Moldova school—she played the guitar and sang many Turkish songs for us. We danced to Erik Dalı and Damat Halayı and wrapped up the night.

This month didn’t feel like just one month—it felt much longer. I experienced so much and traveled a lot. I really don’t want to feel overwhelmed like that again. I hope next month will be better for me.

Report written by Sinem Sağdıç, she's from Turkey 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.