Around an ancient custom from the village of Buru, almost forgotten by the world, and the hidden queer history of Cluj, the Refuge of Creation Association reconstructs two kinds of memory: one rural, threatened with extinction, and another urban, long excluded from the public narrative. For Liviu Bulea, the president of the association, both initiatives – “Spring in the Romanian village: Băbăluda” and “LGBTQ+ Imprints in the History of Cluj” – mean the same thing: the recovery of what was lost or kept in the shadows.
Through AFCN funding, the Creation Refuge has managed to bring to light two almost forgotten worlds.
In a country where major theatres, museums or established festivals hardly manage to keep culture afloat, much of artistic life takes place outside the institutions. Romania has around 4,000 non-governmental organizations active in the cultural field – small groups, local associations or artist collectives that work constantly, often without public visibility and without stable support. For many of these actors, the National Cultural Fund Administration (AFCN) has become, in recent years, the only chance to move their projects forward. Created in 2005, AFCN operates under the authority of the Ministry of Culture, but has autonomy in organizing funding sessions. In 2025, only 31% of the 702 projects registered in the first session received support – the rest remained outside.
This is the second episode of the “Arta de a ristista” series, “Weekend Adevărul” brand, about the people and initiatives that keep culture alive in Romania. In this episode, we talk about the Creation Refuge, an association that documents and highlights worlds on the edge: forgotten rural traditions and queer histories recovered from silence.
Past and present
The Refuge of Creation Association explores, documents and sheds light on two worlds that rarely reach public attention: the isolated village with traditions on the verge of extinction and the invisible queer history of a large university city. For Liviu Bulea, the president of the association, both projects are attempts to recover, on the one hand, what is slowly disappearing, and on the other, what has been hidden or ignored.
“Spring in the Romanian village: Băbăluda” started from a personal need to give visibility to an almost forgotten village, Buru, from Cluj county, and to a celebration that today is held only here. The village is hard to reach, with few inhabitants and a community that migration and lack of prospects are thinning year by year. Together with a team of artists, Liviu Bulea lived in Buru for ten days, during which they documented the Băbăluda celebration and the stories of the people in the village. The residence had not only an artistic stake, but also one of solidarity: the artists sought to create a bridge between the village and the outside world, to preserve tradition, but also to help the villagers discover new methods of generating income, starting from the specifics of the place. The documentation took shape in two distinct exhibitions. The first took place right in the village, in the churchyard, where the villagers can see their own lives and customs reflected in the artists’ works. The second exhibition will reach the Ethnographic Museum in Cluj-Napoca, opening to the urban public a window to a fragile, almost unknown world.
The second project, “LGBTQ+ Imprints in the History of Cluj”, brought together conferences and a traveling theater performance, also with an emphasis on recovery – this time, of queer memory. At the French Cultural Center in Cluj, a series of conferences discussed topics such as myths and truths about HIV/AIDS, gender education or the history of local Pride, with guests from Cluj and Bucharest. The centerpiece of the project was the theater performance held over five days, in five different spaces in the city, each with significance for the history of the LGBTQ+ community. The viewers were invited on a journey with the storyteller Ion Negoițescu, the writer from Cluj who had the courage to declare himself gay in a hostile time, and discovered places, stories and people that remained outside the official narratives for a long time. From the history of gay clubs in Cluj in the 90s to clandestine meetings and the first editions of Pride, when the city hall did not accept demonstrations in the center, to visual artists for whom sexual orientation was a source of creation, the show managed to bring to the fore a fragment of ignored history.
In the village of Buru, the Băbăluda tradition comes to life again through the Spring in the Romanian village project.
Both projects depended decisively on AFCN funding. The money went primarily to pay the artists, actors and everyone involved – “so that they can do a good job and then have the desired results“, says Liviu Bulea. For “Băbăluda” 11 artists worked directly, plus curator, graphic artist and people for promotion, and for “LGBTQ+ Imprints” the team reached about 20 people, including the technical and communication part. Without these funds, the projects would most likely have been impossible to implement or would have been reduced to one-off actions with limited impact. The private sector remains difficult to access, especially for initiatives that do not bring immediate visibility or profit, and the competition for public funding is huge. “I find this kind of funding from the state extremely important. Afterwards, we hope to be able to attract other sponsorships – but without AFCNs it wouldn’t have happened“.
The impact was felt immediately. In Buru, the villagers’ reaction exceeded expectations: people got involved, made available time, space, stories, promoted the project on the village’s social networks. For Liviu Bulea, the opening of the community was one of the most valuable successes. In Cluj, all performances within the LGBTQ+ project were held with full halls – a sign that such stories have their audience, even if they are not always visible in the public space. “I think a lot of people thought about who they are in the community and discovered stories and people they didn’t know“.
Looking to the future, Liviu Bulea does not hide his concern: “Without this kind of funding, many NGOs and independent spaces will die“. Competition for resources is high, and austerity hits especially the initiatives that try to recover what is not visible or not “profitable”. He hopes that these funds will remain open for atypical projects that need a real chance: “I am especially glad that this LGBT project was accepted, which was extremely visible and put in the people’s eyes. It is extremely important that these projects also have a chance“.
The Creation Refuge projects, therefore, speak of the power to bring to light what would otherwise be lost: holidays on the verge of extinction, queer histories ignored, communities that would otherwise go unnoticed. For those involved, but also for the public, these meetings – be they exhibitions, performances or simple dialogues – can change a perspective and sometimes even the destiny of a place or a person.
