Island Life and the Importance of Water: a Visit to Malinska

I am now calling the period from June to September: “Croatia period”, when I visited my Tandem partner Sabina in Malinska as it was my third time in Croatia in three months. This gave me a chance to get to know not only Malinska better, but also the city that is on the island Krk, as well as much more of Croatia: about life, moods and people.

My placement was valuable both personally and professionally as I had the chance to to meet different creative and talented people, sharing perspectives on different topics and experience. Sabina first introduced me to her organisation and to the main „Udruga Termen Malinska“ team. All together, we discussed their activities in Malinska – what they are doing now and what they are expecting in the future. Their organisation goals and mission. We shared both organisations good and bad practices working with the audience and young people. We discussed possibilities on how to improve our work. As I am interested in audience development both theoretically and practically, I think it was a great experience for all of us, to discuss, share and develop some ideas.

Besides that, together with Sabina, we had interesting meetings with local talented artists. With dancer Kristina Kekica Paunovski we started developing project ideas, shared advice for project development and partnership possibility. Kristina showed us fragments from her various interdisciplinary projects, told us about how she is involving different age groups and all together, we agreed that we would like to involve her as choreographer and dancer in our Tandem project.

Jazz artist and painter Vedran Ružić told us about his working experience and peculiarities, how he is combining music with painting and his inspirations. Together with another painter Ivan Car, cultural field student and Vrbnik touristic information center leader and Frakopan association leader we discussed different cultural features, barriers and motivational aspects that audiences could have in different events and small communities, as well as their wishes and goals. Together we have been looking for similarities and differences between our two countries, histories and people’s mentalities. We found many common things – the same barriers for culture, same issues with young audiences and the political field.

During all these meetings and talks, we found the time to walking in Malinska, Vrbnik and Krk, trying to feel that relaxing and calming way of living, enjoying sunny weather and 28 degrees, understanding how important water is for this island and its inhabitants, the ability not only to live near it but also use it every day – for swimming, fishing, relaxing, inspiration and so on… Once again I felt that people here live in much more harmony with nature than in bigger cities like Kaunas, where I am based.

Now we are preparing for meeting our new Tandem partner Tamás Buvári (SzeretFilm Stúdió) together with Sabina in Kaunas, where we will all discuss our project topic: water as an essential part of our three cities (Malinska, Kaunas, Veszprém).