Platforma BD – Comunități în dialog
Storytelling - Defence and Resilience
Cluj-Napoca, 27 - 31 Oct. 2025
The 2025 edition, titled “Storytelling, Defence and Resilience,” explores how visual narrative through comics, illustration, and animation can function as a tool for documentation, reflection, and the affirmation of resilience, both individually and collectively.
The program was structured around ten interdisciplinary workshops, facilitated by ten invited specialists with backgrounds in visual arts, psychology, anthropology, architecture, narrative journalism, and social design. These workshops brought together 100 carefully selected participants, including young artists, students, educators, cultural mediators, and active members of various local communities.
The working process emphasized dialogue, exchange of perspectives, active listening, and collaborative participation. Each workshop aimed to develop narrative, graphic, or performative methods that could contribute to the transmission of collective memory, the strengthening of community identity, and the nurturing of emotional and cultural resilience. This participatory framework enabled not only the creation of artistic content but also the formation of networks of solidarity, support, and ongoing engagement.
At the end of the program, on October 31, 2025, a public follow-up session was held at Zbor Hub, where participants and facilitators presented the processes, conclusions, visual materials, and reflections generated during the workshops. This open event served as a platform for connection between the public and the artists, marking the project’s transition toward the publication and archiving of its outcomes.
During the public session, participants shared their working processes, personal insights, and collaborative results developed throughout the workshops. The atmosphere encouraged collective reflection, connection, and the visibility of creative processes, not only their final results.
The facilitation and guidance of these processes were made possible thanks to Andrada Tatiana Crișan, Silviu Aldea, Alexandra Onișor, Oana Maria Mateescu, Raluca Lupan, Camelia Sisak, Corina Rotar, Anamaria Tomiuc, Daniela Dumulescu, Horea Avram, Adrian Buda, and Alice Iliescu, who created working environments grounded in trust, openness, and reflective exploration.
The series of talks that accompanied the session further expanded the dialogue into a broader theoretical and contextual framework, through the contributions of Alina Apostu, Claudiu Gaiu, Maria Drăghici, Miki Braniște, and Mara Rațiu, who offered critical perspectives on the role of visual culture in representing memory and community resilience.
