site.btaBTA Signs Partnership Agreement with Luben Groys Theatre College

The Bulgarian News Agency (BTA) signed a partnership agreement with the Luben Groys Theatre College in Sofia on Monday. Under the deal, the college will tell BTA every week about the various activities it performs, and the news agency will share the information with an international audience.

This is BTA’s 42nd partnership agreement with a higher education institution. The agency expects that by the end of this year it will have signed such deals with all 51 Bulgarian universities, BTA Director General Kiril Valchev said.

He presented the Luben Groys Theatre College with a selection of photos and news reports from BTA’s archive. He noted that years ago the establishment of a separate BTA department called LIK, centred on the agency’s magazine of the same name, created a great opportunity for regular coverage of news about Bulgarian culture and education.

Valchev said BTA maintains partnerships with theatre institutions such as Sofia’s National Theatre and Theatre of Satire, the state drama theatres in Ruse, Shumen and Varna, and the A'Askeer Foundation, which presents one of the two most important sets of annual theatre awards in Bulgaria. It has also signed agreements with the National Academy of Theatre and Film Arts, the Union of Actors in Bulgaria and the Union of Bulgarian Film Makers.

“The purpose of these agreements is something particularly important in your domain. They ensure that all copyrighted material used by BTA is legal,” Valchev told the management of the Luben Groys Theatre College.

The College Rector, Stefan Serezliev, said BTA offers higher education institutions greater public visibility. “There can be projects in the future in which we can work as partners – in the field of culture and art, and the creative industries in general. I am filled with optimism,” Serezliev said.

Luben Groys Foundation President and Vazrazhdane Theatre CEO Robert Yanakiev noted that the Foundation has partnered with BTA before, but the new deal is a wonderful idea. He said he will offer BTA a similar agreement with the Vazrazhdane Theatre next week. He stressed that BTA has always been the news outlet where the Luben Groys College and the Vazrazhdane Theatre have sought coverage of their work.

Yanakiev thanked the news agency for paying attention to culture. He said he has a dream. He wants to live to see a news item about theatre published on the front page of a daily newspaper. “It will mean that we stand on a sound foundation,” Yanakiev said.