Bread Houses
CHALLENGES ADDRESSED
Score impact
Nature
Wellbeing
Health
Mobility
Participation
Economy
DESCRIPTION
The Bread Houses Network is an initiative of International Council for Cultural Centers Association. It creates and unites centers for community-building, creativity, and social entrepreneurship. The mission of BHN is to inspire individuals and communities to develop their creative potential and cooperate across all ages, professions, gender, special needs, and ethnic backgrounds through collective bread making and accompanying art forms. The network strives to empower the people to connect with each other and find hope and solutions to their challenges. Currently, the network unites 8 Bread Houses in Bulgaria and trained people and organizations in 20+ countries on 6 continents.
[NBS Card] Bread Houses Network
The Bread Houses Network is an initiative of International Council for Cultural Centers Association. It creates and unites centers for community-building, creativity, and social entrepreneurship. The mission of BHN is to inspire individuals and communities to develop their creative potential and cooperate across all ages, professions, gender, special needs, and ethnic backgrounds through collective bread making and accompanying art forms. The network strives to empower the people to connect with each other and find hope and solutions to their challenges. Currently, the network unites 8 Bread Houses in Bulgaria and trained people and organizations in 20+ countries on 6 continents.
INNOVATION ASPECT
• Collective preparing and sharing of food facilitate community building;
• The inclusive “Theatre of Crumbs” method and “Build a Bread House” events allow involvement of people with different, backgrounds, abilities;
• Bread as symbol of peace and unity and the bread making foster cooperation and collective experience across cultures, professions, ages.
REPLICATION AND SCALABILITY
• The concept of the Bread House is to be an accessible and friendly space where people from all walks of life can gather and participate in collective creative activities;
• The Bread House can be a social and cultural centre and a successful social enterprise at the same time. The social enterprise model can include the Event centre and Bakery forms.
PARTICIPATION PROCESS
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CO-DIAGNOSTIC & CO-DESIGN & CO-IMPLEMENTATION
Bread Houses Network creates opportunities for co-designing and co-creating through the “Theatre of Crumbs” method and the “Build a Bread House” educational board game.
The Theatre of Crumbs method consists in collective bread making during which the participants are engaged in creative activities: drawing in flour and expressing ideas on a chosen topic; mixing dough in couples; making and decorating bread puppets and playing out a collective story. Every bread making has a specific topic, which can be related to any aspect of the community or personal life, fostering direct cooperation, co-creation and self-expression.
In the “Build a Bread House” educational game, the participants identify and discuss the challenges in their community and collectively propose solutions for overcoming them. The game enables collective creation of ideas and design of solutions, but also teaches basic social entrepreneurship skills.
BEST PRACTICES and REFERENCES
LINKS:
The model and methods of the Bread Houses Network have been awarded and recognized as good practices by various international organizations. As an example, the Sofia Bread House cooperation with the Health and Social Development Foundation was dedicated to educational bread makings for children of Roma origin between 4 and 8 years old.
