Ani Kodjabasheva
is the director of The Collective Foundation based in Sofia. The Collective creates placemaking interventions that unite institutions, the private sector, and civic society around the goal of green public spaces for recreation and culture. The Collective's initiatives that open up waterfronts and disused urban spaces to the public have quickly grown in popularity, attracting tens of thousands of visitors. In 2022, Rivers of Sofia was a finalist for the European Bauhaus Prizes and also received a European Heritage Award/ / Europa Nostra Award. In 2021, the project Danube Design Lab was a winner in the 2021 Idea Challenge by the Berlin-based organisation Civic Europe. The Collective's projects include collaborative design workshops whose ideas are then realized with pop-up structures. Ani writes and manages projects for The Collective and works on organizational development. Before, she was a teaching assistant for three years at Columbia University in NYC. Ani holds master's degrees in art history with a focus on modern architecture and planning from the University of Oxford and Columbia University.