We have successfully concluded our first mobility “The art-linking souls through artistic participation” – a seminar which took place in Italy, Torino and Alpignano from 2nd to 7th of December.
It engaged 5 participants from each involved organization: Fundación Splora (ES), Kalnciema quarter (LV), La Candela Teatro y Comunidad (ES) and, the hosting organization, Stranaidea (IT).
This seminar provided time and space for artists, cultural and community workers and youth workers to interact: to share, discuss, adapt and renew their best practices regarding artistic participation in the neighborhood.
The seminar started with team building and getting to know activities using from the very first moment theater methods and techniques from the field of non-formal education, which helped a lot to establish a comfortable and pleasant atmosphere among participants. As an introduction to the seminar and a link to previous local activities (check out more here: https://participart.eu/good-practices/), participants reflected on connections between their cities, through challenges that each city deals as well as good practices already applied to answer these challenges. The following days, each organization had time to present tools and methods that each uses in working with youngsters in local communities; special focus has been given to the two organizations which practice theater. In this way, participants, not only tried out Forum Theater , proposed by La Candela Teatro y Comunidad and Fresh Daily Theater, a Community Theater method created and proposed by Stranaidea (IT), but they also had time to reflect on the experience and figure out in which way they could adapt methods to their local communities. Group also reflected on the role of art and culture to generate participatory processes in local communities: what does participation mean to each of them and what makes an activity really participative? What would inspire people of local communities to act for change? What makes art a useful tool to encourage participation and what are the contradictions one faces when promoting participation? These are just some of the questions that participants have been asked to reflect on through creative activities and continuous sharing. At the end of each day, special time was dedicated so that each national group could reflect on the day-by-day experience with the special aim to arrive on the last day and create specific action plans to be implemented at a local level the following months, after the seminar.
The first part of the seminar took place in Alpignano, a town very close to Torino in a venue immersed in the woods, administered by the biggest Italian organization working on environmental issues – Legambiente. During the seminar, we tried to keep high values related to food (environmental impact, origin, naturalness) since meals provided to participants were km0 and in total respect of environment and participant’s special needs. The surrounding area facilitated a lot of the implementation of the activities, mainly the moments dedicated to reflections as well as the Fresh Daily Theater activity, carried out completely outdoors. Last two days the activities had been carried out in the city of Torino. Apart from the working timetable, we tried to exploit the moment of lunch in Torino so as to visit San Salvario’s Casa del Quartiere, which has been presented by Italian team as one of the good practices of the city since it’s a place where active participation of locals becomes truth in a daily level.
After this mobility, participants got to know each other better, personal and professional links and bridges have been created among our organizations. Next step will be to apply exchanged methods and tools to our local communities. Though everybody is again spread around Europe, we remain linked with common goals: how to use art and culture so as to generate youth participation. Stay tuned!
This KA2 good practice exchange project is co – funded by the Erasmus+ Programme of the European Union.
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