Annual report of the Caucasian House for Horizon Foundation

Caucasian House

G.Tabidze str. 20

+995 32 2 996022

+995 32 2 997261

22- Nov- 20

Contents

1. Updates...... ………………………………………………….………………………………………….3 2. Multinational Weekend School...... ………………….…….…....…………...... 4

3. Culture Calendar ……...... ……...... …………………………………6

4. People’s University of Caucasian House ……...... ……………………………………………...……....8

5. Caucasian House’s Internet Diary….……...... …...………………………………………….....…...... 10

6. Publishing Activities 2020……………………………………...……………………………………...11

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1. Updates

1.1 Organizational Developments

Despite the ongoing COVID-19 Pandemic 2020 for the Caucasian House was dynamic and full of new developments. During this period following organizational developments took place:

• Caucasian House finished building its branch in the village of Magaro/Nukriani in Kakheti region. The building started to host Weekend School from September. • New coordinator for Culture Calendar – Marika Tkeshelashvili joined the team of Caucasian House • Executive Director was re-elected for another year • Camera and video equipment of the Caucasian House was fully upgraded

1.2 Fundraising

During the 2020 Caucasian House campaigned for fundraising and in the result following new projects has started in Sustainable Development program and in Peace and Integration program:

1. Project Title: Challenging Economic Dogmatism in a. Aim of the project: The project aims at contributing to democratizing and bringing pluralism in teaching economics in Georgia, in an effort to make Georgian economy more sustainable and equitable. b. Donor: Friedrich Ebert Stiftung c. Grant Amount: 20 000 EUR d. Duration: 2 years 2. Project Title: Strengthening Internal Dialogue for Peaceful Transformation of Conflicts in Georgia a. Aim of the project: The goal of the project is to promote peaceful transformation of conflicts in Georgia through improving collaboration, communication, and analysis among key Georgian stakeholders. b. Donor: Swiss Embassy in c. Grant Amount: 147 730 EUR d. Duration: 2 years 3. Project Title: Online training for conflict affected youth from the South

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a. Aim of the project: The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic was extremely high on cultural public events, such as film screenings and discussions in rural areas of the Caucasus, most of them getting cancelled or postponed. Most borders in the Caucasus are still closed. The theoretical and practical training content will enable the participants to focus on the organization of alternative film screenings. Seen the risks connected to the pandemic, the participants will get the tools to organize online film screenings, film screenings in open- air or drive-in settings (allowing for social distancing and safety). b. Donor – Brot für die Welt c. Grant amount – 12 175 EUR d. Duration: 6 months

Other donors Caucasian House is currently working on includes:

• Ministry of Education and Culture of Georgia • German Embassy • EU Creative Europe program • Heinrich Böll Foundation • Crowdfunding through Globagiving.org

1.3 Future Plans

• Strengthening fundraising for cultural projects and initiatives through the help of Georgian Embassy in Denmark • Fundraising for additional resources to professionally organize the archive of Caucasian House • Building and strengthening bilateral partnerships with foreign and local cultural and research organizations as well with universities

2. Multinational Weekend School

The restrictions and lockdown imposed by the Government of Georgia since February, 2020 made it impossible for the Weekend School to function at Caucasian House building in Tbilisi. Therefore, CH board made a decision to move the project to newly built CH’s Nukriani Branch in Kakheti Region (Kakheti Region remains the green zone with COVID-19 cases).

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Newly built Caucasian House Branch in the village of Magaro/Nukriani

After the public schools’ closure majority of the Georgian families have moved to rural regions, so the need to have educational/cultural activity centers in these regions became even more critical. The rural population is among the most negatively affected groups-people have lost their seasonal jobs in service industry, so they had to move back to their villages with almost no income.

Since August school program has been fully updated and it is based on individual approach to children from teachers and mentors. The school curriculum includes two parts: educational- cognitive and cultural-entertaining and already at the beginning of September more than 60 pupils from local villages enrolled in Weekend School with average age group of 10-13 years old.

The syllabus includes the following subjects:

• Ecology • (writing and creative thinking) • Music • Arts and crafts • Dancing • Singing • Sports • English language • Chess

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3. Culture Calendar

Caucasian House with its “Culture Calendar” project has become a cultural and educational hub in Georgia. Project consists of two major components: 1. organizing events dedicated to important dates for the Caucasian culture; 2. giving out small grants to support local civil and cultural initiatives.

On July 20th Caucasian House announced the beginning of the contest for microgrants to encourage cultural events such as exhibitions, performances, musical or literary gatherings, etc. A call for the proposals lasted till August 5th. The results were announced on August 10th. There were 13 applications received overall and 5 of them were chosen as the winners of the contest to get the finances for their projects.

During the implementation period following events were organized:

1) Public discussion: The Modern Issues of the Georgian Language

A public discussion regarding the issues of the Georgian language was held and streamed live on Facebook on the 14th of April. The date has been celebrating the Day of the Georgian language since 1990.

The discussion covered the essential challenges that confront the Georgian Language nowadays and it’s worth mentioning that it was the only public event in Georgia dedicated to that date in 2020.

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2) An interview with Kote Jandieri - How was Georgian TV series “the Hot Dog” created

On June 30th public interview was held with Kote Jandieri, one of the script writers of the famous and beloved Georgian detective TV series “Hot Dog” which was broadcasted in 2003- 2013. The tv series consists of 5 seasons one of which had been forbidden due to the realistic reflection of the severe and intricate real political events of those days and was finally released in 2013 instead of 2007. The TV series has been gaining more and more audience for the last several years as it has become like a discovery for younger generations to find out about the recent history of their society.

The subject of the interview was the intentions of the writers and producers, the whole creative process and the consequences of the prohibition of the fourth season.

3) A play “The Last Work Day”

On July 30 and 31st a play written and directed by young Georgian theatre director Giorgi Kashia was held in Caucasian House. The play is based on the real events and depicts the last work day of the miners, killed by the broken minecart. Tragedies like that is quite common in Georgia and usually the reason of the death or maim of the workers is the old, worn out technology and not ensuring the necessary safety measures. So among other things, the play was also an attempt to convey the severe problem to the audience to raise the awareness as well as express protest to the institutions responsible for the causes.

The premier of the play was a product of collaboration between the Caucasian House and Akhmeteli Drama Theatre. It drew enormous attention. The entrance was free however in order to avoid the overcrowding it was necessary to register beforehand to be able to attend the play.

4) Event devoted to the Jewish Culture and Jewish Heritage in Georgia

In the frames of the small grants of Culture Calendar Hillel Tbilisi – an International Jewish Student Organization organized an event which was held in the yard of the Caucasian House. There were 3 different types of activities on the event, each representing the different

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aspect of the Jewish culture. The audience gathered on the event was introduced to traditional Jewish holidays and its attributes; A caucasologist and a researcher of the Jewish history in Georgia, Lasha Shakulashvili, gave a lecture about the famous Jew people living in Georgia in 19- 20th centuries and contributing a lot both to Georgian and Jewish culture and societies. The audience were exposed to a traditional and well-known Jewish music played on violin.

5) An Exchange of History, Traditions and Culture Among the Ethnic Minorities

In the frames of the small grants of Culture Calendar the Youth Centers Association of Akhalsopheli based in the village of Akhalsopheli, Kakheti region organized a cultural event. Teenagers from 6 different villages - Gavazi, Tivi, Zinobiani, Chantliskure, Mtisdziri and Akhalsopheli itself – gathered to exhibit their homemade crafts, present the history of their villages and ethnic groups, traditional clothes as well as the music from their folklore. The inhabitants of these villages include , , , Udis and .

4. People’s University of Caucasian House

People’s University of Caucasian House is the project of regional significance in Georgia. This year university has listeners from 9 different locations and it has received around 700 applications for the selection of new students. Currently project has around more than 300

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beneficiaries, in Tbilisi and in the regions. This tendency shows that more and more young people involved in academic life are willing to learn more about Caucasus in the frames of this project. It also needs to be mentioned that “People’s University” also unites students with disabilities, thus giving them motivation and chance to interact with their peers.

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic since March most of the lectures were recorded and streamed online, but besides lectures students came up with the ideas to to better get to know each other and wrote and published “Virus Diaries” where they described life in quarantine and their views on ongoing cultural, educational and social processes. Students from the regions also started to present their hometowns and recorded small videos about the historical sights which can be found on the YouTube channel of Caucasian House.

New cycle has already included more than 20 lecture-seminars and discussions. Lecture topics are diverse and address cultural, historic, social, economic and political problems. Here are the topics of the some of the lectures:

• Jews in Georgia and in the Caucasus: History and Modern times – Lasha Shakulashvili • Circassian people: History, Culture and Society – Nugzar Antelava • in South Caucasus– Nugzar Papuashvili • Caucasus and – Alexander Kavtaradze • War in Nagorno-Karabakh and its implications for Caucasus region – Paata Zakareishvili

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5. Caucasian House’s Internet Diary The 2020 pandemic had less impact on the Internet Diary, since the main space of the project was already running on online platforms, so the project gained more relevance in terms of information dissemination than it had before. It was to this credit that the Facebook page surpassed 10,000 original likes in September of this year, which means reaching out to a larger audience and disseminating information and our values more effectively. This year we also started to actively use Instagram page of the organizations to attract younger audience.

The YouTube channel of the "Caucasian House" already has about 4000 subscribers. This year our channel was mainly loaded with online lectures held via Zoom, No Comment videos and Documentaries about famous Soviet Georgian-Armenian film director Sergei Parajanov.

How diverse and strong the engagement of the audience is, can be seen in the Facebook comment section and at the forum of the "Caucasian House" YouTube channel, where comments are written in 5-6 languages on average (Georgian, Russian, Chechen, Ossetian, Dagestani, Kurdish, etc.). The feedback is mostly good, although there are sometimes critical comments, but the topics discussed by the "Caucasian House" requires us to be ready for criticism, which our team always welcomes.

We believe this growing audience is the result of a pandemic, a lockdown and a home staying audience, some of whom have decided to focus on online education, and in this

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regard, the Caucasian House provides them with highly qualified, academic material on the culture, economy and political situation in the Caucasus and neighborhood.

Besides pandemic 2020 turned out to be a nightmare for the Caucasus, as in September the war in the Nagorno -Karabakh region resumed between and . It can be said that it was the largest war in the last 30 years in our region. It was also the most informatively covered war and in this respect our YouTube channel and Facebook page turned out to be one of the few online platforms that provided qualified conflict analysis.

This growing demand from the audience to learn more about the history and culture of the region gave Internet Diary impetus to record series of 5 lectures with a young orientalist Sandro Bakuradze. In addition to his lectures, he has prepared 5 scholarly articles on the modern political, socio-economic and cultural life of Turkey.

This year Internet Diary also helped small cultural groups to be able to start and develop cultural and educational activities in the regions of Georgia. In this regard "Caucasian House" supports the small ethnic minority – the Udis living in Georgia. They are small ethnic group living in three villages in Georgia and Azerbaijan who are direct descendants of Caucasian Albanians. They speak a that is different from all other Caucasian languages. With our help, they were able to record a small informative video-presentation, which was disseminated through our social networks, and thus we started a new campaign to make a small statue of the Udi educator and leader Zinobi Silikashvili in village of Zinobiani (You can see the video in English here).

As for the archive, the process was done directly by organizing the already uploaded materials online. Unfortunately, during the lockdown the office of "Caucasian House" was closed for couple of months. Hence due to the strict regulations, this case is still delayed, because the archival case requires direct work with documentation (scanning, registering, making descriptions to the documents of the 80s and 90s).

6. Publishing Activities 2020 Information about the following books will be provided in the December as they are in the final process of production:

• Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson” by Giorgi Gurdjieff (1866-1949) • “Letters about Georgia” by Titus Margvelashvili (1891-1946) • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe in one book

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6.1 Apra No. 27

27th Issue of Literary, religious and philosophical magazine "Apra" has come out in 2020. Apra remains as one of the most demanded publications of Caucasian House and it is with the support of the Horizon Foundation that "Apra" preserves its important place in the Georgian literary life. It is already for 20 years that every spring it has been offering its readers new translations, Georgian literary texts, philosophical and religious works.

6.2 About God, World and Man” by Anthony of Sourozh (1914-2003)

Caucasian House published the book of Antony of Sourozh who was a prominent Russian Christian thinker and practitioner. He is greatly esteemed and respected by Russian and non-Russian people who seek to understand Christianity and, in particular, Orthodoxy. The style of his writings is very lively and whimsical; he speaks in a language that is comprehensible to the modern human being, dealing with deep spiritual issues and opposes any religious fanaticism and restraint. Readers have shown a great interest in his book. The book was also present on the Tbilisi International Book Fair 2020.

Tbilisi International Book Fair 2020 On September 25-27 thanks to Horizon foundation Caucasian House participated in Tbilisi International Book Fair 2020 which was held online. Sold books were delivered to the readers by the manager of the publishing activities of Caucasian House – Giorgi Javakhadze. (You can see the catalogue of our books for the festival in Georgian here)

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