Dūkštas in Ignalina's district is the forth town visited by Travelling Architecture Workshop. The project's green van is still running and the reserves are replenished after each workshop with useful tools and interesting materials that remain after the previous workshop.

Dūkštas - could be a resort town if not for the abandoned valuable architectural heritage. Town centre is calm and tidy with a white St. Stanislaus Kostka Church and small lake. However, the project team's workshop site is on the outskirts of the town - High School next to the railway. There we were greeted by a srowd of children. School area is extremely neat and austere located fifteen minutes walk from the town centre. The calmness of the school environment inspired to create something delicate and sensitive.

Our experience starts from the discussion and the question raised by the children - where does everything start from? It starts from nothing, the children said and they were right.

We found the Dūkštas school yard as a large, tidy and well maintained, but empty place. And here we felt that "nothing" from which everything starts from. We felt inspired by this "nothing" to do "everything". Together with fourteen joyful and enthusiastic children we started dreaming loudly. There were lots of ideas and the empty space was waiting to be filled with elements to enhance communication, shading from sun for relaxing, fun and colorful playgrounds and good mood.

The first day of the project all together as a workshop place we picked school's basketball court area which is and surrounded with the lawn and visible from the school‘s entrance. After presentation of different children’s ideas and general voting it was decided to create playful lawn benches, a wooden terrace on the basketball hoop stand and creative new gaming platform on the basketball surface area. The project was not only joined by fourteen children and nine volunteers, but also the school's Principal Julija Griškienė with family and Deputy Gražina Sobčikienė.

The hard work we combined with entertainment – after long day we would go swimming in the nearby lake. Children’s kindness and sincerity was shown by sharing raspeberries, fresh milk and home made cheese with the volunteers. The biggest impression was children's shimmering eyes and affection of visiting guests.

Project results were presented to children's parents and teachers; all together we were listening to the one of the participant’s music performance with accordion, talked about the legends of the town and promise to continue the work started. We hope that the children who participated in the project have remained with lasting impressions and got into desire to work together. We hope that they will grow up responsible creators their living surrounding.

Dūkštas (Ignalina’s district.)

July 5th - 8th September, 2013

RESULTS: a project consisted of three parts: drawing on the basketball playground (new creative play area), wooden terrace on the basketball hoop rack for match watching and bench set from locally found materials - logs, wooden planks and old school furniture.

VOLUNTEERS TEAM: Aurelija Tulauskaitė, Edgaras Glušnevas, Eglė Jacinavičiūtė, Ieva Saldauskaitė, Juratė Bukauskaitė, Greta Valentukevičiūtė, Laima Čijunskaitė, Margarita Kaučikaitė (curator), Vincentas Vienožinskis.

LOCAL CORDINATION: Dūkštas high school Deputy Gražina Sobčikienė.

Author of the text - Greta Valentukevičiūtė and Margarita Kaučikaitė

Photos by - Vincentas Vienožinskis

Travelling Architecture Workshop - the first large-scale project by Architecture [Children] Fund, which took place in 2013 during the summer holidays. It aims to draw children and village residents attention to the everyday human environment. The project seeks to demonstrate that to take care of the public environment and to foster real changes could be done without a lot of material and human resources.

Architecture [Children] Fund is a volunteering based initiative that develops and implements educational programs for children and youth about architecture and living environment.