Information from the website of the Ministry of Education and Science:
"Horseshoeing, carpet weaving, hand embroidery, sock knitting, barbering. These are just some of the old crafts that continue to thrive in Bulgaria in the technological 21st century. Their stories are told in the traveling photo exhibition "Crafts Are Not Passed On! Hats Off," which opened today at the Ministry of Education and Science. The photos were awarded in a national photo competition organized by the Center for Excellence "Heritage BG." The initiative is funded by the Operational Program "Science and Education for Smart Growth."
"Through this wonderful symbiosis between photographic art and heritage, we touch upon the old Bulgarian crafts to understand that they are not a thing of the past, but of the present, and will continue to exist in the future," said Deputy Minister of Education and Science Vanya Stoyneva at the opening of the exhibition. She introduced the winner of the first prize in the competition—17-year-old Alexander Vakarev, a student in the 11th grade at the 7th School "St. Sedmochislenitsi" in Sofia. He came with his classmate and hero of the award-winning photo story, Viktor Nikolov—one of the few people in Bulgaria who knows how to shoe horses.
Prof. Georgi Vaisilov, Executive Director of the IAPO, also shared his positive impressions of the photographs, emphasizing that the project is unique in that it aims to preserve and promote Bulgaria's tangible and intangible cultural heritage and pass it on to future generations.
The project itself and the idea behind the photo contest were presented by Prof. Vladimir Penchev , representative of the Center for Excellence "NASLEDSTVO BG" and director of the Institute of Ethnology and Folklore Studies with the Ethnographic Museum of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, who shared his impressions of the implementation of the project and outlined future plans for its development through the creation of virtual museums.
The event concluded with the screening of a short video about the photo contest "Crafts are not passed on! Hats off!"
Source: Ministry of Education and Science, http://sf.mon.bg/?go=news&p=detail&newsId=1031 (14.03.2022)
