Local Voices

Meet the people shaping PlaceCRAFT's pilot regions. Through Local Voices, we introduce inspiring local people and explore their work, their connection to place, and their perspectives on local development.

• Community Centre "Vazrazhdane 1906" l Maya Bozhilova •

Maya Bozhilova is a member of the team at the Community Centre "Vazrazhdane 1906" in the village of Shtraklevo, Ruse Region, Bulgaria. Her mission is to bring new energy to the centre, make its library more attractive to young people, and organise activities that bring local residents together. She describes the centre in three words: spirituality, community, and enlightenment, and in practice, it functions as exactly that: a meeting place for generations, a guardian of Bulgarian traditions and local memory, and an accessible centre for knowledge, art, and personal development.

Maya gives that heritage a living form. Through celebrations of 24 May, Trifon Zarezan, St George's Day, literary evenings, and preparations for the centre's upcoming 120th anniversary, local traditions are shared and passed on rather than left to gather dust. At the heart of this work is Shtraklevo's remarkable literary history, tied to Dimitar Dobrev and the "Svetlostruy" newspaper, once the largest and most significant provincial cultural, educational, and literary publication in interwar Bulgaria. The centre's museum collection still preserves manuscripts and materials linked to nationally recognised Bulgarian authors, giving this small village an unusually rich cultural story to tell.

Maya's work reflects many of the values at the heart of PlaceCRAFT: local development that builds on what a place already holds, rather than importing something new. Alongside preserving legends, children's games, rituals, dialects, and traditional recipes from the Ruse area, she looks firmly toward the future, with a vision for a modern community space with fast internet, where young people can meet, study, and work, while also documenting local heritage through videos, cooking tutorials, and creative projects that bring generations together.

"The community centre should become a modern place, not only a place for books and old songs, but somewhere young people can meet, study or work, and where generations can create something together."
— Maya Bozhilova

As a locally rooted initiative, Vazrazhdane 1906 shows what heritage-based rural placemaking can look like when a familiar institution is given new life and purpose. Maya safeguards a literary legacy of national significance, builds a space where generations genuinely meet, and demonstrates how a village community centre can become both a guardian of memory and an engine for its future.

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Photo credits: Community Centre "Vazrazhdane 1906"