• Two creative teams have been awarded the special award of the Ministry of Environment and Water for their participation in Danube Art Master ‘2025

The national phase of the international competition for children and students Danube Art Master, organized by the Global Water Partnership in Central and Eastern Europe (GWP CEE) and the International Commission for the Protection of the Danube River (ICPDR) has come to an end. For Bulgaria, participation in the competition is coordinated by the Association “Global Water Partnership – Bulgaria” in partnership with the Ministry of Environment and Water.

This year’s Danube Art Master runs under the motto “Our Danube – Our Future”. The competition is held at two levels: national and international.

The national jury ranked 14 works. The first-place winners for the youth category for artwork, video and photography, as well as the winners in the category for teenagers for artwork and photography for the Danube River, have been sent for evaluation at the international level. We wish the Bulgarian participants success in winninng international awards this year again!

Traditionally, the special awards of the Ministry of Environment and Water go to group performances in the national phase of the competition.

This year, one of the awards went to the teenagers aged 6 to 11, led by Elenka Shtereva from the “Probuda 1926” Community Center in the village of Yoglav, Lovech Municipality, who participated in the competition with two works - a video clip “Clean River – Active, Healthy, and United Children” and a photograph “Every Drop of Clean Water is a Smile for Childhood”.

The special award of the Ministry of Environment and Water was also received by the teenagers from the Professional High School of River Shipbuilding and Navigation - Ruse, Elis Nedeva, Martina Daneva, Lora Rusanova, Victoria Radneva, and Andrea Todorova in the age group of 12 to 18, led by Steliyana Ruseva, for their participation with individual photographs of the Danube River.

The Minister of Environment and Water also sent a congratulatory address to the children's "Dream Team" at the "Danube Splendor" Association in Ruse for another successful performance at the Danube Art Master. The "Dream Team", which has adopted the preservation of the river and its inhabitants as its cause, is last year's prize winner of the Ministry of Environment and Water, and the previous year won first place in the junior category.

The participants in the Danube Art Master come from all countries in the Danube basin - Germany, Austria, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Montenegro, Romania, Bulgaria, Moldova, and Ukraine. The initiative encourages children to take a close look at their local river, reflect on what the environment means to them and create original works of art, photography, or video.