Local Heroes then and now – Connecting myth and reality

“Local Heroes - connecting rural myths and reality” is a project that aims at the collaboration and comparison of three distinctively different areas: the Czerhat region in Hungary, Beysehir Region in Konya/Central Anatolia and Adiyaman in Southeast-Anatolia. Each of the cultural cooperation partners from the regions conduct annual festivals and activities during the year in order to educate and culturally and artistically address the rural population. The subject for cooperation within this context was the collection of ancient rural myths on the one hand and success stories of today’s “Local Heroes” on the other hand. By local heroes, individuals that have a positive impact on their surroundings were meant. By comparing the stories of local myths and stories in three very different cultural regions, we aimed at pointing out similarities and eventual differences of beliefs (myths) and struggles of human individuals for distinct values, convictions and their motives. Within the project, the stories collected were artistically translated into lyrics and music, animations and visualizations by the help of digital technologies as well as plastic arts such as paintings and sculptures. The output was presentations of the identified heroes and their stories at festivals and exhibitions, as well as a website and booklet that informed about the material collected. One of the main output consisted of the reflection of the collected and translated stories in the form of music together with projections of animations on the landscape in which these stories take place: in Adiyaman, a projection of visual and musical output was planned on the historical site of Nemrut Mountain, while in Beysehir the event took place on the lake and in Hungary in the forest.