Opsa in paintings
A souvenir set of coloring postcards "Along the Rural Roads of Belarus: Opsa" was presentes in the Museum of Traditional Culture of Braslav District Association of Museums on 11 July 2023.
The idea to create such a set came as a continuation of the work on the history of villages and localities, which was carried out within the framework of the School Garden project. One of the first steps towards the creating set was the Open Day in Opsa, when the staff and experts of the Green Cross Belarus NGO got to know the village and the Braslav region as a whole. Next was the search for information, which involved teachers from the Opsa school, local historians and museum staff from Braslav. This extensive cooperation was formed thanks to the ‘School Garden’ community that has developed over the past few years. Based on the collected materials, the artist Eleonora Liakhnovich created the images in which she tried to show Opsa village and its surroundings in the most diverse way.
As a result, a set of 8 kits consist of 4-6 colouring cards was created. The authors of the set strongly recommend to colour the cards with pencils and even reveal the secrets of this technique and the basics of colouring on the cover of each set. You can find out the colours for colouring by looking carefully at the vignettes on the covers of the sets.
If you collect the whole set, you can see and learn what the centre of pre-war Opsa village looked like, why the local patriarch oak was called ‘Napoleon's’, when the narrow-gauge railway appeared and where it went, what the Plater's family palace was like and what remains of it, what was taught at the Agricultural School before the war, how children lived in the Opsa orphanage after the war, who lives in the Opsa lake, what grows in the vegetable garden of the Opsa secondary school and how to make Opsa-style salted cucumbers. Thanks to short but informative commentaries on each set and individual postcards, you can make a real journey through the town and its surroundings, while the cover map will help you orientate yourself on the terrain and connect each colouring picture with real places and objects.
In addition to the general interest in the colouring books, a positive outcome is that the museum has already planned to hold similar master classes based on the postcards from the set, which will be available at the museum kiosk. Besides, the set became an occasion for meetings and closer acquaintance of representatives of different micro-regions of Braslav region.