Babtai | Contemporary Neighborhoods
Babtai – Babtai is a town in Kaunas region with a unique character. Here you can easily find charming nature spots, as well as stop by important buildings. Babtai joined Contemporary Neighbourhoods project in 2020. The hope is that during the project Babtai locals will be able to find creative ideas uniting all of them, which will help to nourish cultural life. What is interesting, there are quite a few strong and creative people who enthusiastically initiate activities in various locations in Babtai. In the end, the aim of the Contemporary Neighbourhoods project is to build communality among locals and involve them as much as possible into cultural and art processes to spark the feeling of community.
Discussions on how cultural and art activities should be approached took some time. Regardless, the consensus has been reached! What was the final decision? To create a mobile food lab in a trolley. In 2020, citizens of Babtai set out on a journey through recipes. They had meetings to choose the recipe, which became an essential step in getting closer to the goal. The community’s curiosity, involvement and bright smiles are the proof that the creation of mobile food labs are a perfect fit for Babtai citizens and introduce additional colours to their lives. In 2020, for the recipe choosing and workshops a trolley was renewed from the inside and decorated from the outside. The local artists not only offered creative solutions for the trolleys, they also united their efforts and created four benches. These benches mark the most important places in Babtai and uncover interesting stories or simply are there to sit down, let yourself be overtaken by calmness, and observe the beauty of the surroundings. Past year was memorable for the friendship between Babtai and artist Gabrielius Žvirblis as well. G. Žvirblis sees an enormous communal and creative potential of Babtai citizens, especially from Babtai youth. The friendship is planned to continue through year 2021 and help strengthen the community identity. In 2022 Babtai plans to organize a traveling communal food festival. Evidently, there are many reasons to give the attention to Babtai, and we invite you to get to know this unique place of Kaunas region better.
Brief statistics. In 2020 Babtai creative community activities had 14 partners, one event and 23 activities were organized. These events involved 237 participants and around 300 spectators. Three professionals and artists worked in Babtai, and 5 long-term art, cultural objects have been created: the trolley-lab and four benches. If you would like to know more about the creative communal processes of the Contemporary Neighbourhoods project in Babtai and / or join them, write to [email protected].
Moments from the Contemporary Neighbourhoods project activities were captured by A. Aleksandravičius and M. Plepys.
More about the activities of the Contemporary Neighbourhoods project in Babtai can be found by clicking on the links below (Lithuanian):
