Traveler in the Easter Tradition

The Dimitrie Gusti National Village Museum is a special place

Ana-Maria Cononovici, 05.04.2022, 14:16

The Dimitrie Gusti National Village Museum is a special place. It is a breath of fresh air in a bustling city. It is a joy in every season to see nature in all its splendor, while living the atmosphere of villages of yore. It is a place where people of all ages can find their roots, while on holidays we can discover ancestral traditions. We stopped over there to talk to communications director Mariana Balaci about the Traveler in the Easter Tradition workshops:

“As every year, this year we are trying to make our own decorations and jewelry, clothing, and we are trying to learn from traditional craftsmen how to paint Easter eggs and how to work with handmade thread, including embroidery. This year especially we tried to hold workshops up until the Sunday before Easter, aimed at children 6 to 12, organized each Sunday, in the idea of providing the opportunity to spend quality time with family in the village museum. So, children attend the workshops, while parents take a nice Sunday stroll through the Village Museum. We are glad that this year too we have quite a demand for organizing this series of workshops, and we are glad that these kids are willing to learn, and that parents are eager to initiate them in the arts of traditional crafts, learned from the traditional craftsmen and the fine artists we work with.”

Children are expected here to prepare for the most important celebration in Christianity, taking part in lessons for wax engraving on eggs, the technique of double strand weaving, and making decorative objects out of natural or recyclable materials, such as corn husks, pressed flowers, seeds, thread, wood, or cardboard.

Iuliana Balaci, communications director with the Village Museum, added:

“We are in the seventh edition of the Traveler in the Easter Tradition, and we are happy that with each edition we are pulling in more traditional artists and fine artists, and we are trying, as much as we can, based on the early and continual education principle, to teach children to love traditional arts, to love this immaterial heritage, and talk about it, and as a result of this communication to have more kids subscribe. Every time, even we say that there are 10 kids in a given workshop, we always have 12 or 15 who wish to take part in this series of workshops. Basically, every Sunday until Easter we have workshops for weaving, woodwork, corn husk weaving, and egg painting. The Traveler in the Easter Tradition series is on every Sunday, and they continue during the Palm Sunday series, when we also hold egg painting lessons, but also workshops for baking holiday donuts, Lazarus Saturday cakes, bread, and Lent cakes. So, here we have a prolonged edition upon request from our audience, which we took in, organizing more activities than the ones we started off wishing to hold.”

Iuliana Balaci continued:

“Each Sunday until Palm Sunday we have 10 children at a minimum, lets say well have about 15 per workshop, so we will have about 60 kids each Sunday, plus those who will come to the demonstration ones, so lets say 100 children. For us, 100 children at the Traveler in the Easter Tradition events is added value, and each kid who attends them is a teenager and a young person we have won on the side of traditional arts and events, which we promote with love.”

Even if everyday life does not allow us to make our own household objects, as was done in the past, knowledge of the craft can open the door for reinterpreting, for creating a sustainable way of life. The Village Museum in Bucharest remains a place for finding oneself, but also a permanent source of inspiration and beauty. Iuliana Balaci conveyed through us an open invitation:

“We await you eagerly, everyone who want to visit, from young to old, at the |Village Museum, a village in the middle of a noisy capital, a village in which the trees are already in bloom, a village that is waiting for its visiting public and the young public, for a pleasant stroll, for discovery and rediscovery of heritage, and to learn useful things. We conclude the Traveler in the Easter Tradition event with spring, and more importantly Easter traditions, continued with the Palm Sunday series, organized by our museum on April 16 and 17. Then we will have a lot of surprises, many beautiful things we have prepared for the public at large. Obviously we are paying close attention to the kids, for which we have prepared additional workshops. Therefore, pay attention to our museums Facebook page, and to the official website of the museum, www.muzeul-satului.ro, where we will publish information about these events.”

For the time being, unfortunately the workshops are not set up to accommodate children with special needs, because the teachers do not have expert training for that domain.