Rijeka Deputy Mayor Mr Marko Filipović has signed the contract on the allocation of the grant amounting to HRK 797,785.15 from the Efficient Human Resources with Ms Nina Obuljen Koržinek, Minister of Culture, and Ms Cvjetana Plavša Matić, Director of the National Foundation for Civil Society Development.
The grant has been assigned for the City of Rijeka Fifth Ensemble Project to be implemented in partnership with the CNT Ivan pl. Zajc and in co-operation with the Educational Centre Rijeka (Centar za odgoj i obrazovanje).
The City of Rijeka received this grant through the competion that the Ministry of Culture announced as intermediary of the European Social Fund.
The Fifth Ensemble Project initiates the inclosure of the youth with learning difficulties and disabilities into the labour market through preparatory cultural and artistic activities that will result with acquired skills, work habits and new knowledges necessary for the work in the theatre. The project starts with today’s signing of the contract and lasts eighteen months.
Furthemore, this project is connected with the implementation of the project of European Capital of Culture as one of its objectives is also to contribute to the increase and active participation of citizens in cultural activities, especially so regarding the inclusion of people with disabilities and other vulnerable social groups.
Namely, dramaturge Ms Nataša Antulov has worked out this project with the idea that the CNT Ivan pl. Zajc with its four professional artistic ensembles can have the fifth one in the near future, which will gather people with disabilities according to the model of similar examples across Europe, such as the Blue Teapot Theatre Company from Galway in Ireland.
This innovative and experimental project, the first of its kind in Rijeka, requires a thorough preparation of all the participants, such as young people with disabilities, educators, artists, parents, media, wider audience, policy makers and public at large, before the actual professional theatre production of the programme begins. The Fifth Ensemble Project for which the contract has been signed in Zagreb today is the first phase of such a preparation.
Next to the co-operation with the above mentioned Educating Center Rijeka, the attendants of which are young people with learning difficulties and disabilities, another co-operation to be realised is the one with the NGO Rijeka 21, the members of which are the youth with Down Syndrome.