Western Park Fest for Art in Public Space

Zapaden Park Festival strives to create a platform where the dynamics, characteristics and oddities of the public space can be considered through the prism of the present. The main goal of the event is to attract new, active audience. Audience, ready to participate, to change and shape its own living environment according to its own views and needs, and by using the means of art to critically express position towards its surroundings. This way, instead of a place for leisure and entertainment, Zapaden Park, along with its appertaining subway stations and residential districts, become a tribune and a workshop, where artists, audience and random passers-by create unusual works and situations together. The first edition’s curators are Galina Dimitrova-Dimova and Svetlana Kuyumdzhieva.

The event’s name – For the People and the Place – is inspired by the American curator Mary Jane Jacob. Having many years of experience in the so-called ‘public space’, she summarizes a simple and clear principle, which the curators of the festival in Sofia adopt as their own: “People and places are tied together, and for art to find a place, it needs to be both of place and of people.” This way Zapaden Park Festival focuses on the fundamental laws, under which art, artists and audience are in a productive public space interaction. At the same time, it offers a creative and diverse perspective on the current term for “public space” in our country.

The initiative is part of the project: Art festivals in public space: SOFIA CONTEMPORARY and Zapaden Park Open Air Festival, under contract BG161PO001/1.1-10/2010 with Sofia Municipality, financed by Operational Programme “Regional Development” 2007-2013. Zapaden Park Festival supports the city of Sofia’s candidature for European capital of culture.