Ball of the Mocioni Mansion, at the Art Museum. The cultural part of the project was a real success

On Friday, the Mocioni Mansion Ball took place at the Timișoara National Art Museum. Unfortunately, it was not to be organized at the mansion where the rehabilitation works are in their final part, but the problems discovered made additional work necessary. However, the event comes to crown 10 months of sustained work and exceptional collaborations.

The rehabilitation of the manor also had a cultural component, which the Miltonia Association took care of successfully. He managed to complete no less than 11 cultural and educational activities.

“Thus, we set up a consultation and support group – Friends of the Mocioni Mansion, with over 60 members, institutions and professionals from the academic and cultural fields, representatives of local authorities, the Foeni community, teachers, opinion leaders and specialists in social animation -cultural, to introduce a new process at the community level – Participatory governance of cultural heritage, a process that allowed both the involvement of community representatives and co-responsibility them regarding the management of the restored and re-functionalized monument. The best evidence of the functionality of this process is the involvement of the Foeni community, both at the level of public institutions and at the individual level in the revitalization activities carried out around the symbol of the community – the Mocioni Manor in Foeni”, says Beatrice Căițanu, the person in charge of cultural activities from the Miltonia Association

The campaigns to raise awareness among the general public about cultural heritage and community development were a great success and impact, an activity carried out with the help of ethnographers and historians involved in the process.

“And the educational institutions responded with enthusiasm and openness to the education campaigns for heritage and intercultural education where we carried out activities with over 1100 students from 8 educational institutions in Timișoara and Timiș county. With the Bănățan Fruhstuck organized at the beginning of April in Foeni, we started a new festival of traditions and brought to the attention of the people of Timisoara the local products and the traditional recipes of the community that developed around the noble family motions”, says Beatrice Caițanu.

The Mocioni project also took place with the help of Icelandic partners.

“Also, we exchanged experience with Icelandic partners, we trained specialists in socio-cultural animation, we organized a traveling exhibition that stayed in the capital of Iceland for 3 weeks and is still open to art lovers from Timișoara until On May 10, we developed with the help of the Icelandic partner North Consulting two heritage and intercultural education manuals, which will soon be available on the project website. In addition, two innovative applications will allow students to test their knowledge of the history of the Mocioni family and the Manor of Foeni and will facilitate a virtual tour with a bilingual guide (Romanian and English) inside the Manor of Mocioni in Foeni. Last but not least, the street art residency that is coming to an end this weekend will change the face of the community through the proposed artistic interventions on the facades of four representative buildings for the community: the town hall, the school, the kindergarten and the bus station in front of the mansion, which from this moment it is called Conacul Mocioni Station. The landscaping works carried out today with the contribution of local residents and with the support of the City Hall will harmoniously complement this artistic-cultural space created around the mansion”, says the representative of the association.

In a relatively short period for the 11 assumed activities, the Miltonia Association managed to get in direct contact with a number of more than 1300 people and exceeded most of the indicators assumed by the project.