OPEN CITY OPENS ITS DOOR – VISITING BITOLA!

OPENS is on the road again. We packed the badges, tapes, symbols and knowledge of Program and International Cooperation Coordinators in a suitcase and hit the road towards Bitola.

A small Macedonian place, almost at the very border with Greece. A lot smaller than Novi Sad, but with one very attractive moment – Youth Culture Centre and one of their festivals – Bitola Open City.

“The visit to Bitola is organised within the “OPENS on the Road” program and the promotion of European Youth Capital Novi Sad in the region. We received the invitation to present OPENS, as well as the title itself, and to see which were our challenges in the process of winning the title, which systems and mechanisms have we established and at which level – all for the purpose of motivating the representatives of the city of Bitola to try and fight for the title themselves, in the following years”, Valentina Antić, OPENS International Cooperation Coordinator explains.

The four-day Bitola Open City festival is organised every year, at several locations around the famous Široki sokak in Bitola, when parts of the city become the stages for different concerts, artistic performances, exhibitions, film and documentary projections, but also tribunes and panel discussions on significant social engagement topics.

One of the most visited tribune this year is the one in which the representatives of OPENS participated.

“Representatives of the city government, representatives of culture but also young activists from NGOs were among the visitors of the tribune. Youth Culture Centre really takes care about culture content, but also about the content for young people at the local level, thus we already talked about the things and programs which we can implement together next year”, Valentina adds.

Special OPENS atmosphere was made by the search for our symbols. Namely, we hid our symbols with small tasks at three locations in Bitola, and the team who managed to find all three tasks first, who followed the instructions and took photos was awarded with EXIT tickets and invitation to join us at OPENS State of EXIT Zone