In May 2009 the Eccentric City visited Gorna Bela Rechka in Bulgaria for the Goat Milk festival. To find out more see http://novakultura.org/goat-milk/en/

The Goat Milk Festival takes place every year in May and warmly welcomes visitors from all over the world.  This year I was fortunate to be working on a project with Intercultural dialogues where I was told about this eccentric festival in the hills of Gorna, Bela Rechka.  On my anual birthday/xmas excursion to weird and wonderful places I went to Sofia (Bulgaria) and met the organizers and some of the artists involved who invited me back in May. This was a great opportunity to be part of the festivities and do some further eccentric research.  The short film above is a snapshot of the wonderful people and the joyful happenings that took place. Friend and work colleague Sandra Hall of Friction Arts also joined me on the trip and facilitated a past and future mapping workshop with participants, while I ran a watercolour painting workshop, which was an idea from Brendan Jackson. To thank the village residents, who have an average age of 70 and were very accomodating, kind and very much part of the festival, Sandra and myself collected messages on labels from participants, which were translated, and used to created an istallation on the village benches. Thought I’d finish the film with the amazing performance by Mamapapa.