Summer Bucium University, X-th edition, 2022

Authors’ Comment

As part of the cultural landscape of Țara Moților, Bucium Commune gradually reveals the entire richness of its cultural values, a mirror of the victories and vicissitudes of the locals. The tenth edition of the Summer University continued the steps started in previous editions and recalled part of the activities and efforts made to safeguard the area and raise community awareness of the importance of material and immaterial cultural values preserved and perpetuated in the area.
The RPER-Ro Association has contributed, since 2009, to the preservation of the cultural heritage of the area, through punctual interventions in addition to the interventions carried out by local authorities or even locals. The present workshop "Rural Heritage" can be considered to be related to previous editions of the Bucium Summer University, as the main problems and intervention needs in the area were partially pre-identified within the Bucium Summer University. At the same time, a series of local crafts were identified, too little capitalized, which, in the long run, reactivating them, could be a first step in reviving and consolidating social life.
The workshop took place in the context in which in 2022 took place the tenth Summer University organized by RPER in Bucium and, at the same time, 15 years of presence and involvement of the Association in saving and promoting the cultural heritage of the area were celebrated. The tenth University has cumulated a series of actions and interventions that have given continuity to the directions promoted by the previous ones. A series of events and workshops related to the Bucium Summer University 2022 were conducted to mark this important moment.
In an interdisciplinary approach - architecture and tourism students, tutors, but also locals - the project aimed to bring back to life a local culinary custom, to save from extinction an architectural element specific to the houses in the area - the oven, as well as to promote this custom through a bread baking and variation event, as a related event of the Bucium Summer University 2021 carried out in partnership with OAR Alba, co-financed by the National OAR and the Association of the National Cultural Fund. The activities of the workshop also stimulated the social side, through the event of using the restored oven, which was also a reason for social cohesion and celebration of local traditions. Last but not least, the educational approach aimed to accumulate information through the direct experience of architecture and tourism students: joint expeditions to identify and inventory existing furnaces, practical learning of a constructive system, and traditional local construction techniques, thus contributing to the continuation and preservation of Romanian identity traditions.
Shingles, the traditional covering of constructions in Bucium commune, Alba County, have become a rarity today, as have people who still know how to make it. Master Petru Vişa from Heleşti hamlet is one of them. I discovered it, after years of searching, during the fifth edition of the Bucium Summer University (2015), organized by the Rencontres du Patrimoine Europe-Roumanie Association (RPER). In his workshop, with traditional shingle tools shaken from the dust of oblivion, the students and guides of UdV Bucium 2015 learned the cracking, cutting, mezdling and guarding techniques specific to shingle making in Țara Moților. Each student produced a finished shingle plank, with which, put together, the restoration of the roof of a fountain was practiced. The shingle workshop was organized, this time in the household of craftsman Petru Vișa, isolated in a natural setting of unparalleled beauty, on one of the hills between Bucium and Roșia Montană. As in two previous editions of UdV Bucium, the craftsman conveyed to the students all the operations of the traditional shingle-making process, specific to the Bucium area: how to radially crack fir vines with "panacea" (axe/bard) to obtain 65-70 cm long planers; how they are roughened and smoothed by planing them, along the fiber, with the "mezdreau", after we securely fix them on the "horse"; how they "roar" on the edge, so that they can join each other when mounted on the roof. The transfer of "know-how" between generations of all ages has happened in good mood and diligence, both ways.