Interview with Andrei Sever Bârzan, Andreea Eșanu and Alice Monica Marinescu “I’m not ashamed to work. We all have the right to work to make ends meet. I wash toilets and I also teach. I’m working, not loitering! And besides, I like working with children. I’ve always loved them.” In 2007, the story of Rodica Sandu – a cleaning lady at Telec school in Bicazu Ardelean – was hyped up by the media, who emphasized the degradation of the education system. Rodica Sandu began teaching English at the school where half the teaching hours were available after she passed the…

Interview with Irina Vacarciuc CasaM is a theater performance dealing with the lives of women who have been victims of domestic violence in The Republic of Moldova. The performance developed from interviews conducted with women from villages across the country, it premiered in 2010 in Chișinău and it was staged in over 40 villages and small towns in Moldova. The cast is made up of Snejana Puica, Mihaela Strâmbeanu, Ina Surdu, Irina Vacarciuc, directed by Luminița Țîcu. I talked to Irina Vacarciuc, an actress on the independent scene, about the performance and the interaction with an audience unfamiliar with theater…

Interview with Hilda Twongyeirwe How did it all start with FEMRITE, the Ugandan Women Writers’ Association? The association started from a need to give women writers in Uganda visibility and space to write. During that time, there were very few women writers and even those few writers were not really recognized in mainstream writing. That is how we started to promote women writers and to create more women writers through training workshops. Our main activity is to train women in creative writing skills and to provide space for them to write. We however have writing programs where we also consider…

Interview with Alice Monica Marinescu, Katia Pascariu, Alexandru Potocean and Andrei Serban UnderGround. The Jiu Valley after 1989 is a project of observation and analysis of the everyday lives of several communities affected by the political and social changes which began in the 1990s. The project aims to document the economic status, the lives and work of the miners in Post-Socialism. UnderGround is a project of performative reconstruction of the stories which fuel the history of the Jiu Valley communities, communities which find themselves on the border of survival, migration, extinction and possible reconstruction. The performance is based on research…

Interview with Mona Nicoară I saw Our School for the first time at the One World Romania documentary film festival in 2012. After the screening, there was a debate where Roma rights activists highlighted the disastrous effects of segregation and structural racism in the Romanian education system. The then-Minister of Education, Cătălin Baba, claimed that Our School was an isolated case which was not relevant for education in Romania. He said he would look into the matter and take all necessary action. But what happens when one case becomes endemic to the teaching reality of Romania, a reality which privileges…

Interview with Laurențiu Ridichie Tell me a little bit about your experience as a teacher of visual education. I’m interested most of all in your goals, the way in which children react to your teaching approach and also to you as an artist. There is a hierarchy in schools between ars liberalis and ars mechanica which seems as if it has been maintained since the Renaissance. The last place in this hierarchy belongs to visual education, right behind musical education. This subject is looked upon as something laughable, kept alive mostly to fill the teaching norms of tenured teachers in…

Interview with Florin Bican Ever since he returned to Romania, 56 year-old writer and translator Florin Bican has been trying to stimulate local children’s literature, which has been overwhelmed by translations after 1990. Publishing houses refuse to take a chance on Romanian authors, although there are writers with realist approaches interested in this field. There is a heap of criticism levelled at the phrase “literatura pentru copii” (“literature for children” – the translation of “children’s literature” into Romanian, trans. note). Could we use it in such a way, given the fact that books meant for children are actually projections of…