The public surveys for the local audience are part of a series of studies aimed at creating a "snapshot" of the current state of the cultural ecosystem in each municipality.

The team of the Ritual Gatherings festival, in partnership with the municipalities of Troyan, Kyustendil, and Shumen, has launched public surveys aimed at researching the local audiences of cultural events and identifying their desires, preferences, frequency, and types of attended events, as well as the factors that motivate or deter the audience from attending an event.

The surveys are being carried out in connection with the implementation of the project BGCULTURE-2.001-0117-C01 "Ritual Gatherings: Traditional Rituals and Interactive Contemporary Art - Mechanisms for Building Communities and Achieving Sustainable Cultural Ecosystems", within which several types of research will be conducted on the territories of the three partner municipalities.

Surveys will also be conducted with local cultural operators and cultural activists to identify their cultural activities and strategies for reaching audiences, their capacity, and entrepreneurial knowledge.

In parallel, research will be conducted on local cultural and folk heritage, specifically the specific rituals and traditions in each partner municipality, their preservation, development, and popularization through interactive methods.

The information from these surveys will be used to create a dynamic archive of regional rituals and customs on the project website www.ritualgatherings.com, with the aim of preserving specific living cultural practices or "reviving" forgotten ones.

As a result of the above-mentioned activities, a digital cultural profile and infographic will be prepared for each partner municipality, and based on the prepared cultural profiles, a strategy for attracting and engaging existing and potential audiences will be developed for each municipality. Cultural councils will also be created in the partner municipalities, as a kind of mechanism for developing local cultural ecosystems and sustainability of the project's goals.

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Ritual Gatherings: Traditional Rituals and Interactive Contemporary Art - Mechanisms for Building Communities and Achieving Sustainable Cultural Ecosystems” (Project BGCULTURE-2.001-0117-C01) is implemented with the financial support provided by Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway under the EEA Financial Mechanism to the amount of EUR 199,984. The project is part of the OP “Cultural Entrepreneurship, Heritage and Cooperation” Result 2 “Improved access to arts and culture”.

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