It’s nearly that time of year when my thoughts turn to the Theatre School for Children at Risk that we (LLP Group) sponsor every year in Shiroka Luka, a village in the Rhodope Mountains of Bulgaria.  This year the theme is India. It’s a big theme, and a big country, but my friend Elena Panayotova, director of the event, and her artist friends have long since acquired the knack of boiling down a culture shared by hundreds of millions to a few bare essentials – a spot of yoga, a few fairy tales and a big Bollywood ending (see Bollywood).

So I spent Monday afternoon with one of my closest friends, Peter, foraging for Indian knick-knacks, materials and clothes in Whitechapel, in the East End of London. ‘How many boys and girls outfits can we get for three hundred pounds?’ I ask, and we usually manage to buy as many as we can carry and at a generous discount too. The more difficult problem is ferrying them to Bulgaria.

The Theatre School runs from the 4th until the 23rd July in the village of Shiroka Luka and the town of Smolyan, both close to the Greek border, about fifty miles south of Plovdiv (does that help you to visualise its location?). Children from the village orphanage (built in the 1970s when the Communist government was eager to place such institutions out of sight and out of mind in remote mountain villages) and from other orphanages in the region come together for classes in yoga, mime, dance, music and theatre. Many of the children come from the Roma community and our aim is to help all of them gain in confidence , discipline and self-expression. Above all, though, it’s enormous fun.

If you’re anywhere near Bulgaria at the end of July then pay us a visit. Let me know and I’ll give you more useful directions.

And if you’d like to contribute in any way to the fun or funds, then let me know.