At the Palace of Culture in Ungheni, an afternoon in mid-June showed how a sheet of paper or a dried flower can be turned into art. At the “Fantezie” Crafts Centre, young people from the Municipal Youth Centre and pupils from the “Mihai Eminescu”, “Vasile Alecsandri” and “Ion Creangă” high schools worked at a creative workshop, trying four techniques that each come with a story older than it seems.
Four crafts, four stories
Origami is the best known: the Japanese art of folding paper, without cuts and without glue, in which a square of paper becomes cranes, flowers or geometric shapes. The name comes straight from Japanese — “to fold” and “paper”.
Quilling, or paper filigree, means narrow strips of paper rolled and shaped into lacework. Its name hides a tasty detail: in the Middle Ages, monks rolled the gilded edges of holy books on bird feathers — and from the goose “quill” it kept its name.
Oshibana is perhaps the most poetic. It is the Japanese art of “painting” pictures from pressed flowers and leaves, in which dried nature takes the place of paint. In sixteenth-century Japan it was practised even by samurai, as an exercise in patience and concentration.
Découpage (from the French “to cut out”) decorates an object with images cut from paper, glued on and then covered with varnish until the paper’s edge disappears and everything looks painted.
Where it happens: the second-largest palace of culture in the country
The place is not just any. The Palace of Culture in Ungheni, built between 1977 and 1987, is the second-largest cultural venue by area in the Republic of Moldova, after the National Palace in Chișinău. In 2026 it is due to enter a renovation funded by European money, estimated at about 890,000 euros — a sign that the institution that hosts such workshops is itself preparing for a new stage. Since 10 June, the post of artistic director has been held by Edgar Bunea, founder of the TeatrUngheni troupe.
A town that was twice Youth Capital
Such workshops do not appear out of nowhere. Ungheni has twice held the title of Youth Capital — in 2011 and in 2023 — a programme through which the state funds, for a year, activities for young people. The town also has a Municipal Youth Centre, whose volunteers were among the workshop’s participants.
The stakes behind it: ever fewer young people
All of this gains weight when set next to a single figure. The number of young people aged 15–29 in the Ungheni district fell from 24,013 in 2014 to 11,029 in 2026 — more than half, in twelve years, according to the National Bureau of Statistics’ provisional data. In such a context, every free activity that gives young people a reason to gather, to create and to stay tied to the town is no longer just pleasantly spent free time. It is, in miniature, an investment against leaving.
The workshop’s details come from the Palace of Culture Ungheni’s announcement. The explanations of the techniques are from encyclopaedic sources. The data on the Palace, the “Youth Capital” programme and demographics come from official sources. The workshop had minor participants — this article does not identify any child.