The project ’Let’s Talk through Puppets’ has been implemented ‘Areguni’ Social Development NGO in Tchambarak community
This small grant program was also implemented in Tchabarak city, which is one of the target communities of the project. One of the specifications of this region’s cultural life is Puppet Theater. In Tchambrak city a puppet theater, which was acting during 2010-2011 years, was closed and decomposed cause of insufficient conditions, weakness of professional capacities and lack of finance. The main objective of ‘Let’s talk through puppets’’ project was to reestablish and renovate the puppet theater by strengthening the capacities of the theater’s staff, obtaining the necessary funds for the preparation of a stage and puppets. The project was a cultural precedent which showed the cultural potential of the community and, having ‘Areg’ musical theater made visible the vision of the development of Puppet Theater. There started a cultural competition in the community, which leads to development. According to the words of the theater team leader, after the second performance they were also applied by the inhabitants of neighboring communities to involve their children in the theater’s works. By the population’s demand a junior school studio was created near the theater and now for 25 juniors there are carried outclasses for puppet creating, controlling and for improving the speech on the stage.
The program also has a great institutional support for the development of local government’s capabilities. By the words of the project manager, one day she saw how the Director of the Cultural House was arguing with the secretary of the staff about writing a four-year Strategy Paper, by saying “But when you did the research of needs and prioritized them?” and then she showed the course package given within the project, by saying “ Read and study in order to avoid writing everything that comes to your mind, without thinking”. And the community mayorYuri Avalyan obtained a great experience by visiting the communities of Ukraine twice and Republic of Poland one time. He was sharing the experience of those countries during the meetings.
The publication has been produced within the project ‘Equal Opportunities for National Minorities and Disadvantaged Groups in Realizing Cultural Rights: Richness in Diversity’ funded by the European Union under Eastern Partnership Culture Programme and implemented by GURT Resource Centre (Ukraine) in partnership with the Civil Society Partnership Foundation (Republic of Armenia) and Center for NGOs Development (Republic of Armenia) and aimed at developing cultural diversity and support the culture of national minorities through strengthening capacity of local self-government bodies, public authorities, civil society organizations, local culture institutions in communities in Ukraine and Armenia.