site.btaThree-day Festival of Roof-top Art and Entertainment by Kolectiv and Sofia Business Park

Beginning June 23, the Kolektiv urban projects team and Sofia Business Park offer "the hottest roof in the city" as part of a three-day festival that offers visitors culture, creative workshops, entertainment, food and drinks. On the roof of one of the Business Park office buildings are fresh murals - on a total area of 3,000 sq m - by the hottest Bulgarian graffitti artists XROME, Djo Venci and Alexi Varna, who were selected after an open call to proposals, said Martin Yankov of Kolektiv Foundation. He was speaking to BTA while coordinating the finishing touches for the opening event on Friday.

Kolektiv has become quite recognizable in Sofia and beyond with their initiatives for socialization of underused and abandoned urban space.

Titled The Park, the festival turns 5,000 sq m of areas in the Business Park into social spaces for art and entertainment, including the rooftop with its 3,750 sq m, according to Google Earth.

The project will continue to live and evolve after the three festival days, Yankov said while 15 special teams were taking care of the containers that will be used by the food and drink stands, of the shade, the sprinkler systems and the playground.  He explained that the Business Park has a capacity for 10,000 visitors and the festival roof can take some 1,500 people as per the fire safety instructions. "We built two extra fire exits so that more people can come," he said.

One lane on the road in the Business Park will be closed to traffic. It will be taken by stands for a craft fair, Mish Mash, followed by stands for food and drinks, and organizations working for various causes.

A poll among 400 workers in the Business Park and residents in the Mladost 4 district where the Business Park is located, found that the majority of them want to be involved with social causes. "Social causes are among the driving forces in the happy part of working life," said Yankov. "The answers widely overlapped," he said.

Another thing that struck him was that people complained of growing alienation. "The city is growing fast, people are too busy with work or daily chores and end up not knowing their  next-door neighbours. They have nowhere to meet and have a chat," said Yankov. 

He read in the poll that people want to have more off-line exchange and contacts with real people - and share the same physical space with others. 

The design of the festival area was largely based on the information from the poll among Business Park workers and local residents, Yankov said. His hope is that the project will bring about changes in Mladost 4 - not just the Business Park. "We want to open this space more and make it more 'park' and without making it less 'business', " said Yankov.

He says that this project was more challenging by their other urban interferences because they were in abandoned spaces "where you put one lamp, one chair and a musician to perform, and it makes a great change, people take photos, have fun". "Here we have a relatively well-developed urban environment, shiny buildings, aluminum, glass - and it takes more effort on many levels to make a change. But it is very interesting."

Another goal of Kolektiv is to show business people that it is a great space for bringing art and business together, and thus enrich the urban environment. "There are many important companies [in Sofia Business Park] which have much resources and need to sell what they do, to advertise, they also have goals to support and take care of the environment where they work. This event we are organizing, with all the participating artists, is a great way to meet up and match everybody's interests. The festival can turn into an accelerator for optimizing the environment," said he.

Kolektiv plans several other projects for interferences in the urban environment: in Veliko Tarnovo and Gabrovo, and possibly a festival in the resort town of Sinemorets to attract attention to the fact that the Bulgarian Black Sea coast can thrive without over-developing it.

Admission for The Park festival in Sofia Business Park June 23-25 is free of charge.