Romanian health resorts need people (II) - How we raised awareness about local heritage

Irina Leca

The Electric Plant in Baile Govora, cca. 1910. Now a warehouse.

So how does a small team of heritage enthusiasts start to convince sceptic stakeholders that abandoned buildings are not burdens, but untapped potential for local development?

Let me first start by pointing out two important facts that shaped everything we did. The first was COVID, which made us rethink our plans everytime the authorities made new announcements on how public events should take place.

The second were the local elections. We were supposed to have them in spring, but the pandemic pushed them further down in autumn, so there was a lot of political pre-campaigning going on from February to September all over Romania. That meant a lot of positive news for heritage - candidates were announcing their ambitious projects that would save endangered heritage, restore city centers and so on. Sometimes, these were not even new, but promoted during past elections and never implemented.

In Govora, saving local heritage was not part of this year’s campaign for any of the candidates. That didn’t mean that our initiative didn’t get interpreted as political, on the contrary. Due to the timing of our project and our partnership with local authorities, we knew we had to (1) put in extra effort to explain to locals that we were 100% apolitical and (2) convince people civic involvement is a good thing. So what did we do?

We measured our resources and capacity
With just 3 people in the core team and not a lot of funds available, it was clear to us that we couldn’t go big, and that we also needed some strategic partners. We partnered with the local authorities (of course) and the National Institute of Heritage (who supports grass roots heritage initiatives with knowhow). We counted on getting new partners after securing funding and spreading news about what we were going to do.

We defined our audience
We didn’t want to waste any energy in engaging with the wrong people, so we started with a stakeholder map. Our main stakeholders were owners of historic buildings, the local and regional authorities, architects and heritage professionals. Tourists were also a big part, as health tourism is the main income generator and people with lung issues come here every year. Knowing that some locals were also very passionate about local heritage, we kept them in mind when designing our project. With almost no budget for PR and communication, we started a facebook page to keep some of our stakeholders active and informed.

We figured out what works best
By April, we knew what we had to do and managed to secure funding to do it (cca. 20.000 euros from public grants for cultural initiatives). We planned a round table discussion to link professionals and local stakeholders and start a discussion around what can be done with local heritage, from planning to funding. Then we were supposed to have a week-long public event dedicated to local heritage, with workshops, thematic movies, guided tours and video mapping on the main landmarks. And, last but not least, we wanted to have an on site intervention in a public space - a small historic gazebo that used to be a beloved meeting place, but had fallen into disrepair.

Group photo from the round table event

The pandemic made us rethink our plans several times, but in the end we managed to do all we had set out to do and even more. We had the round table in May, the week long heritage festival in August and we worked on restoring the gazebo from August to November. 

Because of the severe drop in tourists and travel restrictions, we had more time to engage and connect with the local community. We got to interview people who had lifelong connections with the town and who were willing to welcome us into their homes and share their stories with us. 

Radu Geiculescu, engineer and local historian

Maria Boskoff, former dentist, 98 years old

As for the activities we organized, the most successful ones among locals and the few tourists were the guided tours, the movie screenings and the video mappings. We live streamed the video mapping sessions on our facebook page to reach a wider audience and saw more people show up or tune in each time. 

Discussions on how to restore houses or take care of old trees were not that popular with the locals, but we had key attendants among local authorities. Fortunately, restoring the gazebo really helped us raise awareness. After we finished restoring it with traditional techniques, with craftsmen and with the help of sponsors and volunteers, messages and questions from locals on how they should intervene on their houses began to appear. We are now working on a best practice guide that we hope to publish and distribute this year. 

Somewhere in June, while we were working on this project, the National Institute of Heritage premiered a grant meant to help owners of historic monuments access funding for emergency conservation works. We saw this as a chance to do something for one of the endangered buildings. Funny thing, although Govora has a lot of built heritage, only four buildings are individually listed in the List of Historical Monuments and thus eligible for public funding. Out of these four, the only one in disrepair was the Ivanovici Villa, which had been declared a public hazard in 2005 and abandoned in 2012. The building belonged to the town, thus to the local community, and the Mayor managed to have it recognized as heritage in 2009, thus saving it from demolition. Since then, there had been no efforts towards restoring the building and its structure became increasingly vulnerable. 

Ivanovici Villa, built cca. 1900

This was a great time to act, so we decided to approach the local authorities and see where it goes. The grant could win them 40.000 euros to cover studies and construction costs, and we had 1 month to write and submit the project together. They were open and enthusiastic, but there was a small problem - they needed to provide a 10% co-funding and had no budget for it. Overly enthusiastic, we decided to raise the money ourselves and donate a minimum of 4.000 euros if the project was awarded the funding.

What followed was an intense month-long crowdfunding campaign, in which the Ivanovici Villa and Govora gained national coverage and we got the attention of the entire community and beyond. We won the grant, raised the money, took a deep breath and started preparing for the actual construction works. More on how it all went down in the following post.