Video: Rosina Pencheva, Dobrin Kashavelov
Photography: Rosina Pencheva
Photography: Rosina Pencheva
Визия, 2025
On 25 May at 10:00 PM, we present the online premiere of TRACES: Carnival in the Tunnel – the first video from the documentary series TRACES (2024–2026). It takes us back to Let’s Make the Cats Dance – a creative intervention by Capturing Creativity for Carnival Gabrovo 2025, staged in the Tunnel in the Sixth District.
The Tunnel in the Sixth District is an unfinished piece of urban infrastructure in the central part of Gabrovo – a passage carved into the hill, begun at the end of the last century but left without an exit. For decades, the place existed more as an urban void than as an active part of the neighbourhood: familiar, passed by, used informally, but rarely imagined as a possibility for public life.
What you will see in the video?
TRACES: Carnival in the Tunnel is an emotional document of the first large-scale activation of the site. In it, you will see the artists, participants, and audience – people who enter out of curiosity and stay for the music, workshops, conversations, and the feeling that an unfinished space can, for a few hours, become a stage.
The camera captures part of the Let’s Make the Cats Dance experience – an audience that turns away from the usual carnival route and enters an unfinished urban cavity. Inside, the formats that needed darkness, acoustics, and focus took place: a film screening, a DJ set, and a concert. In front of the entrance, an open area unfolded for workshops, visual reading, conversations, coffee, pop-up formats, and encounters.
This exact combination was the real experiment – not simply placing an event in an unusual location, but creating an alternative stage that works with the specific qualities of the site.
What remains outside the frame?
The video captures the emotion, the artists, and the people. What remains invisible is the preparation – the transformations, volunteers, partners, and all the small and large decisions thanks to which the Tunnel was able to welcome an audience at all.
Дискусия с местната общност за бъдещето на Тунела, организирана от фондация Оптимистас, 2024
Before Let’s Make the Cats Dance, the site had already taken its first important step towards a new life. In 2024, the Optimistas Foundation implemented the project Light in the Tunnel under the Culture Programme of Gabrovo Municipality. The space was thoroughly cleaned – tons of construction waste were removed, and a conversation with the local community was held about the future of the site.
Capturing Creativity was a partner in Light in the Tunnel and gladly continued the process of activation that had begun. This first step allowed us to unfold the Tunnel’s potential according to our own vision – as a temporary stage for urban art, music, visual culture, and community formats.
As part of the long-standing efforts to activate the Sixth District, Gabrovo Municipality commissioned us to create a programme for the Tunnel within Carnival Gabrovo 2025. The invitation was based on our experience in transforming unconventional urban sites into stages for community experiences. Among them are Nevena Ekimova’s art installation in the underpass next to the bus station and Krom Bagelski’s mural in the Sixth District.
The implementation of the project is also part of the efforts supporting Gabrovo’s candidacy for European Capital of Culture 2032, showing how independent cultural work can activate urban spaces, communities, and new audiences.
From Tunnel to stage
Before the event, the site needed to be adapted. The work was not merely decorative, but a series of actions aimed at making it safer, more welcoming, and suitable for an audience. We hung a curtain that served both as a visual endpoint and a projection screen. We painted the visible section, unclogged the drainage channel, and created scenographic decoration, tables, and bars from discarded materials such as old advertising vinyl, cable reels, rejected clothing labels, and other reused materials.
Team and volunteers Painting walls
Working with volunteers on the decoration in Geri’s studio
We also transformed the fence in front of the entrance with discarded foam, painted in advance with volunteers and completed with the help of second-grade students the day before the Carnival. These interventions were temporary but real. They showed that unfinished infrastructure can function as a stage and an urban environment when function, safety, visual language, and shared experience are considered together.
The first trace
Let’s Make the Cats Dance was a test of the Tunnel’s potential as an alternative stage for contemporary urban culture. Over two days, the site welcomed hundreds of people of different ages and proved that it is not simply unfinished infrastructure, but a realised possibility.
A place for sound.
A place for images.
A place for encounters.
A place that does not give a final answer, but asks a very good question: what else could happen here?
A place for images.
A place for encounters.
A place that does not give a final answer, but asks a very good question: what else could happen here?
The live premiere of the video took place in the Tunnel on 9 May 2026 as part of the programme of the second edition of the event at the Tunnel – Dancing Cats for Carnival Gabrovo 2026.
During the event TRACES: Carnival in the Tunnel – From Unused Urban Infrastructure to a Cultural Point, we presented the video and talked with the audience about the future of the site.
“TRACES: Documentary Video Series” (2024–2026) is produced by Capturing Creativity with the financial support of the National Culture Fund under the Debuts 2025 programme, and in partnership with Gabrovo Municipality.