Animate ASTRA! From iron to wood to clay and wool!

From 24 to 27 August 2023, between 11.00 and 17.00, within the framework of the Animate ASTRA! project, there will be an event that brings together seven types of craft workshops organised in eight locations in the Open Air Museum in Dumbrava Sibiului. Among the workshops organised here are pottery, ceramic firing, making agricultural tools from wood, archaeology, cultural animations - the Policeman and the Rural Teacher - and tailoring.

"Animate ASTRA" is a cultural project that brings crafts closer to the contemporary world and city life, bringing to the public the archaic practices and traditional tools specific to each type of workshop. Through these traditional practices we highlight the ecological side of the objects, the materials used coming from nature, the museum visitors can discover these resources and their usefulness: clay for ceramic objects fired for strength and decorated with natural pigments; types of wood used for household and garden tools; fabrics obtained from vegetable and animal fibres (coloured with natural substances) sewn, crocheted or embroidered, etc. Visitors to the ASTRA Museum in Dumbrava Sibiului will be able to take part in craft workshops organised as part of the Animate ASTRA! project, except for the archaeology workshops that will take place between 25 and 31 August", said Raluca Iliuț, museum specialist of the ASTRA Museum.

"The Animate ASTRA! project sends a constructive message in the context of The European Year of Skills 2023, promoting craftsmen with indisputable practical and theoretical skills. Craftsmen and traditional crafts specific to each area are directions for the development of sustainable cultural tourism", said Lucian Robu, Director of the Open Air Museum in Dumbrava Sibiului.

From 24-27 August 2023, the following workshops will take place:

• pottery and the making of utilitarian objects from ceramics at the Potter's Households from Oboga  (Olt county), Găleșoaia (Gorj county), from 24 to 27 August, from Thursday to Sunday, and at the Potter's Household from Horezu (Valcea county), from 25 to 26 August 2023, Friday and Saturday
• pottery firing workshops illustrating firing methods in a traditional kiln at the Găleșoaia Nouă household (Gorj county), Friday 25 August 2023
• workshops of tailoring, crocheting, felt making that will encourage the public to make various traditional household objects at the farm in Săpânța (Maramureș county), 24 - 25 August 2023, Thursday and Friday
• making household and agricultural tools used in the urban garden at the household in Poiana Perișani (Vâlcea county), 25 - 27 August, from Friday to Sunday
• cultural animations/scenarios illustrating important characters from the rural world during the 19th-20th centuries, Thursday 24 August and Saturday 26 August, in the area of the Potter's household Oboga (Olt county); Friday 25 August and Sunday 27 August at the school in Ticera.
• Experimental archaeology, 25-31 August, at the functional blacksmith's workshop in the Open Air Museum in Dumbrava Sibiului.

The demonstrations organised at the functional blacksmith's workshop during the archaeology workshops, from 25 to 31 August, will illustrate an incursion into the history of the craft, by presenting and using the installations, tools and processing techniques used by ancient and traditional blacksmiths. Craft tools and everyday household objects will be made, showing the usefulness of each ethnographic object in ancient times and today.

On Thursday and Saturday, 24 and 26 August 2023, between 11 am and 5 pm, in the area of the Potter's Household from Oboga, Olt county (pottery sector), the rural chief policeman from the beginning of the 20th century will reappear on patrol, in a replica of a period uniform and will interact with the visiting public. Considered, along with the mayor, priest and teacher, one of the pillars of the village in the first half of the last century, the policeman must have been a connoisseur of the village, its inhabitants and, one might say, its ethnography. He had to know the crafts, in order to know which objects were the most tempting for thieves and what they were called in the local dialect.

On Friday and Sunday, 25 and 27 August 2023, from 11 am to 5 pm, in the classroom of the school in Ticera (Etno Tehno Parc area), the teacher from the interwar period is waiting for visitors to show them the school, the learning system of the past and the ASTRA Museum collections related to education (books). For mathematics lovers, two restored abacuses await visitors. The 1924 State Primary Education Act provided for 7 compulsory primary grades, but in rural areas, until the 1950s, there were usually only primary schools for the first 4 grades. Male teachers predominated. The law at that time stipulated the following: if a school had up to 60 pupils, there should be only one teacher, for 61-120 pupils 2 teachers, for 121-160 pupils 3 teachers, for 161-220 pupils 4 teachers, and for more than 220 pupils a new school was established. So, many pupils were taught by one teacher.

The cultural project Animate ASTRA is co-funded by the Municipality of Sibiu through the Cultural Agenda 2023. Thus, Sibiu City Hall supports programmes dedicated to communicating the communities' heritage and craft values.