Maria Elisseyeva’s narration about August trip to Sweden:

Children from the boarding school #4 have been visiting Sweden regularly for many years.  Swedish foster parents take them and spend their 24-day-holidays with our children. As usual, these families are not very well off, representatives of Swedish middle class. Tretyak Charity Fund which is sponsored by the Swedish Queen supports these families’ wonderful desire to give some comfort to children from orphanages.  Many families invite these children for a visit every year, then some of them adopt the child or help him when he is a grown-up to get a job and a residence permit in Sweden.

We have heard about this program at the boarding-school #4, met Swedish people at our celebrations and children often invited us to visit Sweden, knowing that we like travelling. Last year I decided to go and see how it works. We met the family which received Masha Tatieva. This year we have contacted Stella Soe-Pliatska on-line, she coordinates the program in Sweden, and offered training. Our goal was to introduce them to our studio’s activities and share our knowledge of art therapy, games, and training; to meet these parents, to do what we can for them and to get the idea of what the studio could do in future to make their time with children more valuable, education and job oriented.

We rented a house in Sweden not far from Stockholm and invited Swedish families for the weekend. There were 25 of them, they arrived on Friday, and on Sunday we left for the museum in Stockholm all together.  Friday evening, Saturday and Sunday morning we spent in training. We invited with us Ekaterina Tarasova, the psychologist from the boarding school #4, she herself was not sure that she was needed for the trip, because she had met the parents in winter. However, not all families had been present then and still there were a lot of questions from those present at the last meeting. At the end, the meeting with the psychologist which had been planned for 30 minutes, took 2,5 hours. Still there were more questions left. We also had clowning games, board games and our traditional “theatre-on-wheels” planned.

It was Sasha Shishov’s idea and it was the best “theatre-on-wheels” Maria’s Children and their guests ever had.

The show was wonderful and very creative. All Swedes had refused to participate at the beginning but after a while joined the show, because it was very diverting.

The day before the Swedish guests came we had a rehearsal game for Kristina’s birthday party with tasks for grown-ups. It was great,  and Vanya has coordinated the game and shared many interesting ideas.  It was very funny and Kristina liked it very much.  

One of my best impressions was Vikka Mamonova. She is a graduate, has been living in Sweden for several years. She was very glad to receive the invitation and joined us with her Swedish boyfriend. She was very enthusiastic in helping us with the simultaneous translation of the show into Swedish. Some Swedes didn’t know English and it would be difficult without our interpreters: Stella,Vikka and Masha Tatieva. It was very touching that Vikka brought a great amount of popcorn with her and was frying it all on her own, it took her about an hour to stay by the stove while others were having fun.  What a wonderful person, so close to us! It was a great joy to meet her.

The team this year has consisted of Vanya, Ruslan, Nadia, Aslan, Kristina, Yulia Klechina, Marina Shusterman from St.-Petersburg, Sasha and Tamara Shishovs, myself with Ilya and Elya. The girls helped at the kitchen to cook for the whole team, and Ruslan was certainly irreplaceable. Vanya was playing with children, Sasha Shishov organized the show with them. The trip was funded by Ilya Segalovich. The most important part of our trip was visiting museums. I happened to find out that those children who have been visiting Sweden for years, never went to museums. The admission fee is quite high and people can’t afford it. I decided to take children to the Museum of Austrid Lindgren. It is one of the best museums for children in the world. I am very happy that we went to the museum with children and some grown-ups, who haven’t visited it before. We would like to continue the program. They are our mutual children and I hope that we can unite our efforts.