Intercultural Dialogue in Europe
Contact Making Seminar – Networking of Youth Initiatives
Contact
Making Seminar for former Group Initiatives, to prepare
Networking projects within
Action 3 of the YOUTH programme,
23rd September – 3rd October 2003, Brussels, Belgium
Organised by:
SALTO-YOUTH,
Youth Initiatives Resource Centre
Team:
Henar CONDE, SALTO Youth Initiatives RC
Yves Gouters, Trainer, Belgium
Frank
Schmitz, Trainer, Germany
Jean Michel FRERE, Artistic Director, Belgium
Laurence HERMAND, NA Francophone Belgium
Acknowledgements:
The seminar was financed by SALTO-YOUTH, particularly by Youth Initiatives
Resource Centre. It was made possible through the cooperation of Action 3
project officers in the National Agencies who made the selection of
participants at national level and through the cooperation of the European
Commission who organised the Award Ceremony –Youth IN Action.
Overall
aims:
Through this contact making seminar, SALTO Youth Initiatives aimed to
encourage the initiative and creativity of young people by
providing them with the opportunity to meet for preparing networking
projects between youth initiatives of different countries. The main
theme of the event was intercultural dialogue in Europe. The event
also aimed to recognize the projects created and developed by the youth,
and to promote the enthusiasm of young people and the motivation for
developing European networks.
In the
framework of the main objectives of the European Commission for the
European Youth Week, the following aims were pursued :
-
Strengthen the visibility of the Youth Initiatives of the YOUTH program,
by showing the results of young people working on networking artistic
projects.
-
Strengthen the European dimension of local Youth Initiatives, by giving
young people the opportunity to turn their local projects into
networking.
Concrete objectives:
-
bring together European young people who have run local projects in
artistic disciplines to exchange experiences and good practices
-
encourage the initiative, creativity, innovation and expression of
young people who love and practice music, dance, theater or media &
communication
-
create a common performance mixing different artistic disciplines
and learning to communicate in the field of international cooperation
-
create a common understanding of what Networking projects are and
what they are not
-
promote the enthusiasm of young people and the motivation for
developing European projects
-
contribute to the search of partners to develop Networking
projects within Action 3 of the YOUTH program
Target group:
Young
people who are former beneficiaries of Action 3 of the YOUTH programme,
aged between 15-25 years old and who …
- have developed a Group Initiative project on one of the
following artistic themes: music, dance, theatre or media & communication
- are
interested in developing a networking project with European partners
-
have an idea on how to develop the Group Initiative into a Networking
project
- are
motivated by meeting people from different "horizons" and cultures
- are
motivated for European cooperation
In all,
the young people that attended the seminar represented 13 European
countries (9 EU/EFTA and 4 Pre-Accession countries):
Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Greece, Italy, Lithuania, Norway,
Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovenia and Spain.
Theme
of the seminar:
The theme of the Contact Making Seminar was:
Intercultural Dialogue in Europe by working on artistic disciplines.
The
idea was to let young people working in artistic issues meet each other
and exchange their experiences, their ideas, their skills… for developing
networking projects within Action 3 of the YOUTH program.
Young
people wishing to set up a networking project,
derived from:
-
different and actual music skills (Rap, Funk, Hip-Hop, DJ, MC...)
-
contemporary dance skills (Modern Dance, Break Dance, African Dance...)
-
theatre
skills (drama, mime, comedy, classic, contemporary, shadow…)
-
media
and communication skills (video, photography, new technologies...)
would
have the opportunity to work with other young people from different
countries and to mix the disciplines and skills to create something
together.
Ø
The
programme should begin with the presentation of the former Group
Initiatives of participants and their artistic skills
Ø
The
exchange and sharing between participants would focus on the creation of a
common performance that would be shown to a large audience within the
‘Award Ceremony’ of the European Commission
Ø
The
seminar should promote and enhance the understanding for each others’ work
with different ‘horizons’ and cultures
Ø
The
seminar would not happen in a theoretical way but rather in a common
experience of intercultural learning; by realizing a creation together in
a few days, dealing with language, dealing with cultures, dealing with
time, etc… they would get concrete practice/experience of working at
international level
Ø
Time
and space to develop common ideas/plans for long term networking
activities within Action 3
Ø
The
programme would include permanent availability of the trainers and
coordinator for supporting/helping participants to the preparation of the
common performance as well as to develop their local projects into
networking projects
Ø
The
programme should be flexible to adapt it to the group, taking into account
the feed-back received by participants within evaluation meetings
Presentation of the team / introduction of the seminar
The
first seminar day started with a group dinner, followed by the
presentation of the trainers and coordinator of the project, and a short
introduction of the seminar programme.
The
team said a few words about themselves during the first name game, with
which the seminar started. The participants worked in mixed groups of 2
people and had a small interview with each other. After a short time of
about 15 minutes the participants gave a short summary of the people they
interviewed to the audience. Then, a brief description of the seminar
programme with its aims, objectives and main programme-parts was provided.
Afterwards, most of the participants were very tired, so no more programme
activities were provided.
Presentation of the Group Initiative projects
The
second day began with the presentation of the Group Initiative projects.
The participants had the possibility to make a short presentation by a
report, showing a film or a music CD, or even to sing or dance something
they had made in their local projects. The participants were asked to
prepare these parts before the seminar. Most of them used the possibility
to show a sequence of their film projects or of their music compositions.
They needed much more time than was foreseen at the end, so that the
planned programme had to be changed for the afternoon to continue the
presentation of the Group Initiatives.
For
the participants it was very important to know a lot of details about each
others’ Group Initiatives projects. The presentation of the projects took
more than 10 minutes because the group was really interested and had lots
of questions. That is why it was not easy for them to focus only on the
main activities and aims of their projects.
In
the afternoon, the context/background of this CMS was explained with a
short discussion about the main aims of the seminar.
Intercultural learning
Intercultural learning was a topic throughout the seminar-programme and
especially in some working-units. On the second night an intercultural
evening was organised, which was more an informal program topic.
The
next day the group was invited to work on much more detailed and
structured intercultural learning. Using a role game with different
situations, played by different participants, some typical behaviour in
international group dynamics were developed. The interpretations of the
arguments of the actors were also part of the exercise. The aim was to let
the participants feel that intercultural learning means not just knowing
everything about people from different countries. The idea was to break
stereotypes and to find another way to look at different people. In a
common discussion about this topic, an attempt was made to develop the
importance of intercultural learning in the work of international groups.
It
was very interesting to compare these ideas with the concrete practices
and experiences of the participants within the preparation of their common
work/performance for the ‘Award Ceremony’.
Project management
The
input about project management was one important aim of the seminar and
most of the participants were really interested in this topic. The problem
was, that within the group the basics of knowledge about project
management was very different. Some of them were well experienced or less
experienced in this topic. The group was then asked to develop the main
questions in project management by presenting the so called
“9-W-questions”. After explaining each of these 9 questions with its
meaning and importance in the process of project planning, the group was
divided up into 9 small groups to each of the “W-Questions”. In these
groups the participants had to answer questions concerning a concrete
project idea, which they could choose within the list of first networking
ideas.
They
also had the possibility to describe the meaning of the question and why
it is important for the project planning. They presented their results to
the whole group. After each of these presentations, some explanations were
added to this “W-Question”.
The
experience in this working unit was to let the participants feel the
importance of the concept of a project. Simply answering the questions led
to the emergence of a concrete concept. The transparency of a project plan
was one of main goals in this topic.
Presentation of the YOUTH Programme
Since ‘participation’ of young people in European
projects cannot be separated from ‘information’ of young people, it was
necessary to keep them informed of the various actions of the YOUTH
programme. Therefore, in direct preparation of the networking ideas it was decided
to present the YOUTH Programme with the Actions 1, 2, 3 and 5. The focus
was on Action 3 (networking projects) and Action 5 (Support Measures).
Especially Action 5 was described as a possibility for Youth Initiatives
to prepare a project idea before submitting an application under Action 3
–networking.
Many very concrete questions about Action 3 and 5 were answered. Since
all the participants had experiences in Action 3 (and some in Action 1 and
Action 2), they were interested in adding their experiences to their new
ideas emerging from this seminar.
For
most of the participants it was new to know the structure of the whole
YOUTH programme, and in particular, how to use Action 5 to support the
preparation of new projects within Action 1, 2 and 3. The opportunity to
know more about the YOUTH programme and related funding possibilities was
very motivating for developing new networking projects.
Preparation of the common performance
The
participants of the seminar were selected on the basis of the artistic
theme of their previous Group Initiative projects. The objective was to
join young artist ex-beneficiaries of Action 3 to exchange their
experiences and to create something together during the 10 days seminar.
The idea was to link their artistic cooperation during the seminar with a
first kind of networking experience.
In
this context, SALTO Youth Initiatives was invited by the Commission to
create a collective artistic youth performance, in particular 5 short
performances which would be presented within the Award Ceremony on the 1st
October. Each performance would last maximum 6-7 minutes. The European
Youth Week and particularly the Award Ceremony, were a great opportunity
to present their creation on the stage to a large public of European
youngsters and other representatives of European youth work.
This
part of the seminar was carried out in cooperation with a professional
artistic director. Here are the different steps of the creation process:
-
"How can I contribute to a common project"
The
participants were invited to present their previous Group Initiative
projects and their artistic skills to the group, so that everybody could
imagine new collaborations. Videotapes and CDs were welcomed and a short
live performance was asked, if wanted by participants. The objective was
to know what they had done in their previous projects but also what kind
of skills they would like to practice in a common performance. Some
youngsters sang our played music, others improvised a small rap, or a
short play, others danced, and finally there was a group who showed a
musical video clip. A few of them just explained what they could do,
because they needed too much time or material. There were dancers,
singers, musicians, actors, specialists in fireworks, ‘journalists’ (youth
newspapers) and last but not least, there were a few people who were not
themselves practicing a concrete artistic discipline but organizing
cultural events in the framework of their associations. Each one explained
up to which point they could involve themselves in an artistic common
creation.
-
"Creating groups"
The
second step was to give participants the opportunity to know each other,
to share experiences, to exchange ideas, to discuss.. by mixing themselves
in small groups. These groups worked together in several sessions and
proposed first ideas to be realized, if accepted by the whole group. The
trainers insisted on the fact that they should try to break their usual
band or nationality group and they were asked not to be in more than two
performances for the final show. Because of this last point, the
participants sometimes had to negotiate the teams they wanted to be in. No
decision would be taken before they had presented all their ideas and
their technical needs to the artistic director.
With
much enthusiasm, the young artists wanted to create groups as big as
possible, including the entire group and mixing different artistic
disciplines. Both the trainers and the artistic director agreed to let
them work that way until a definitive collective performance proposition
emerged, as it was interesting for their creative development and for the
group dynamics as well.
Unfortunately , it was not possible to run all the collective ideas but
they agreed with the idea of performing in small groups, so that everyone
could take an active part in the projects and would feel responsible for
it. Each group had to face concrete difficulties and find a way to solve
different kind of problems (language misunderstandings, negotiating ideas,
timetable problems, technical problems, etc.). This intercultural
experience allowed the group to go deeper into the relationship between
the small group members… and between the different groups as well.
After some discussions and a final brainstorming they agreed to create 5
short performances:
–
an
animation involving the audience,
–
a tale
in shadow theatre (people from 5 countries),
–
a
modern dance performance (group of dancers from 5 different countries),
–
a
musical band (involving musicians and singers from 5 different countries)
and projection of a video clip (result of a Group Initiative production),
–
a
percussion performance (involving the entire group).
The
propositions were based on the experience acquired during their former
action 3 projects. For instance, the first animation involving the
audience, came from a Group Initiative which was about interactive theatre
in Denmark. The modern dance came from an Italian Group Initiative using
the language of the body and movement to explore the role of immigration
in the formation of an European conscience. The musical band emerged from
a group of musicians and singers who practised in different music groups
within their Group Initiatives in Poland, Italy, Portugal and Belgium. The
percussion project came from a Group Initiative which was about teaching
percussion rhythms to street kids in Portugal.
-
"The approval"
A new
meeting with the artistic director allowed everybody to know the technical
and budgetary possibilities/limits of the common performance. The
organisers of the CMS dealt with hiring instruments, transporting
material, shopping, adapting timetable and finding adequate places for
rehearsals. The global seminar timetable had to be re-evaluated by the
leaders, depending on feasibility, rehearsals, and the most convenient
strategy for the working progress.
As for
the rehearsals, it is important to mention how far the youngsters used the
skills developed in their previous action 3 project (as mentioned above)
and how far they exchanged and learned abilities from each other. These
abilities, firstly developed through their Group Initiatives, and then
mixed to a create a common project in the frame of international
cooperation, could be latterly used to develop long term networking
activities.
Those
who did not want to perform on the stage, drew up an original proposal:
they would create a kind of diary/newspaper of the 10 day seminar. They
would interview the participants and would tell in a humoristic way what
happened during the seminar. Finally, each one would go home with the
youth newspaper, a result of their common experience in Brussels.
4.
"Work in progress"
The
method agreed by the trainers and the coordinator of the project was to
work separately on networking ideas and on the preparation of the common
performance. However, some time per day should be spent to prepare each of
those two different projects. It happened that the preparation of the
common performance on the stage took much more time than expected, so they
used some informal time to discuss and make plans for long term networking
actions. It was intensive work, but the diversity of their activities made
it easier to maintain the motivation of the group within the whole
seminar.
The
different groups were sometimes working separately on their specific
projects and sometimes all together for the two common performances. They
presented the progression of their common work to the artistic director,
who took charge of the technical demands and contacts with the European
Commission to organise the final show at the Award Ceremony.
5.
"The final rehearsal"
On the
last day, everybody needed to put in place their performance on the stage
under real technical conditions; lights, music, instruments... It was a
hard day but they were all very enthusiastic with the idea of showing
their common creation to a big public of youngsters from all around
Europe.
6.
"The show"
The
artistic director was in the control room. The audience was waiting:
looking at the stage and listening to the music. The group definitely gave
the best of themselves. They presented 5 performances, mixing visual and
acoustic issues : starting with a “visual happening” to present the group
of youngsters on the stage, followed by a funny shadow tale about the
YOUTH programme, a modern dance with live music of a Polish Group
Initiative, a multicultural rock band with a video clip of an Italian
Group Initiative and, finally, a collective “percussion school” directed
by a Portuguese Group Initiative… The youngsters were proud of themselves
and happy with the results because they explored such a wide range of
different artistic disciplines and discovered new skills !! This
experience would be undoubtedly helpful in their future work on networking
activities…
It is
important to remember that the show was not the goal itself of the
seminar. It was chosen as a practice method to put participants together
to work on a concrete project, with exchange of skills in real practice,
with intercultural difficulties management, with timing management, with
practical problems to face... that is to say, with a concrete example of
working within the context of international cooperation. The role of the
leaders was to offer support to the group or individual persons at any
moment during the seminar, but especially to encourage them to transpose
on further networking projects the experience lived in Brussels. Now,
participants keep good memories of the seminar, but also the memory of the
reached objective. Strong links have been created between them.
NETWORKING IDEAS PRODUCED
The new
networking-project-ideas was the main aim of the Contact Making Seminar.
After the meeting in Brussels, the participants would be strongly
encouraged to develop their ideas by applying for Action 3 networking
projects of the YOUTH programme.
All the
participants came to this seminar with the motivation of new international
contacts for common projects in the near future. The topics about
networking projects began with a brainstorming of first ideas from the
participants. The following preliminary ideas came up during the
brainstorming :
-
Film
about body language
-
Music
Festival
-
European
musical CD
-
Travelling
performance
-
Database
of funded Youth Initiative projects
-
Youth
Newspaper
-
Percussion
project with/for disadvantaged youngsters
-
Forum
theatre about racism and social problems
The
next day, the whole group continued discussing these ideas but was asked
to focus just on those projects which the participants were really
motivated to take part in after the seminar. In the next days, the
following concrete project proposals were generated:
The
Youth Newspaper project is about developing a newspaper
on-line, with information from youth for youth. Youngsters from Romania,
Poland and Slovenia are involved in this project. They had a very concrete
idea as well as the skills needed to develop the project, which were
acquired within their previous Group Initiative projects. They are
planning to apply for February 2004.
The
Travelling Theatre project is a network involving young people from
Norway, Denmark, Poland, France, Lithuania, Greece and Finland. They want
to create a “Theatre-Caravan” (theatre, music, art, painting, dance..)
through many European countries. Their first idea was to involve
youngsters with fewer opportunities to create a theatre-project against
racism and xenophobia and travel with these youngsters through some
countries, where new youngsters could take part in the project. After the
seminar, they created their own forum on the Internet and they are
developing their idea through this forum as well as a chat room. They are
currently discussing the common theme of the travelling theatre. They have
just applied for a feasibility visit under Action 5 of YOUTH programme
(deadline of 1st November 2003, Finland) to support the
preparation of their networking project.
The
Social Awareness project is about
creating a web-page and developing a broader use of new technologies open
to children as a place of dialogue and exchange of their local artistic
productions. The local work would also be coordinated and centered around
an agreed topic on which they would work freely with their groups for a
certain time, while exchanging ideas, opinions and materials with the
other groups. Eventually, this would take them to an awareness of the
other group's realities and therefore to a deeper understanding of their
own situation. The final aim of the project is to support and help the
development of social awareness and empowerment of children and youngsters
in different local communities.
The network would be composed by people from Spain, Portugal, Greece,
Italy, Lithuania and Belgium.
Each of
these ideas was followed by a concrete action-plan about their personal
plans for the coming months, as well as for the project group and for the
seminar group. Participants were asked to think about what they were going
to do next in relation to their project ideas, what kind of tasks their
“project group” would need to undertake to ensure the success of the
project and what they would like to happen next in relation to the
“seminar group”.
Finally,
it is important to say that a few participants were not totally involved
in one of these concrete networking projects. Some had problems to
integrate their local activities into an international project. The
reasons for this were very different. Two participants were reticent to
develop the idea of their previous Group Initiative into a completely new
project. Two other people were not sure if their organisation would agree
with the new proposals for networking projects. In other cases, the people
themselves found it difficult to see their active role in such a
networking-project or found difficulties to imagine their future
cooperation in an international team. That is to say that the next steps
at international level were too abstract for them or even too far away
from their local activities. In these kind of situations, the leaders
supported the individuals to guarantee their working process in a
different way. Maybe for these participants some cross-border-projects
would work better for first networking experiences.
SUMMARY OF
EVALUATION OF PARTICIPANTS
In
general we can say that nearly 100 % of the participants have achieved
their personal aims of this seminar. Just two people did not
completely achieve their expectations; one concerning the contents and
theoretical learning, and the other concerning practical exercises with
concrete application forms.
Many
participants said that they really learned a lot of things in this
seminar…
-
About the European YOUTH Programme
-
About
life, about people, about other languages
-
About
new working methods, about networking projects
-
“How to
make true a networking project”
-
“Cooperation, working together is possible”
-
“About
working with people that you don’t know, people from other countries”
-
“About
differences, tolerance and understanding, ways of making things happen”
-
“That
nobody have the correct idea, but it is the product of many small ideas”
-
“I
especially learnt to know Europe and also to develop projects with other
countries”
-
“How to
plan the work and how to work in a huge group of people”
-
“To
express myself in different ways”
-
“I have
learned how to develop things together and to respect differences”
-
“I
learned, that flexibility, positive thinking and listening to others is
very important”
-
“That
together people can make amazing things”
-
“Personal development”
Most of
the participants (80%) felt themselves involved in the programme
of the seminar. Some felt that they were not completely involved at the
beginning but later on, this changed. If they did not feel involved, they
held themselves responsible for this situation, because of not being
interested in all the topics or exercises of the seminar.
We
asked the participants about the concept of the seminar with its
two different main objectives: the networking projects development, and
the rehearsals for the final show of the Award Ceremony. Within the
timetable of the seminar it was not always easy to handle the balance of
these two topics. But most participants liked this concept of distributing
the seminar work between networking ideas and the preparation of a common
performance. Just 2 people said that they would prefer to concentrate on
the show rehearsals. 3 people would like to concentrate on networking
projects and project management.
One of
the aims of the seminar was to develop new contacts between the
participants. We asked the participants about their new contacts at the
end of the seminar and, with the exception of one person, everybody said
that they have found new partners for common project ideas on a European
level. Some of them agreed to apply for the next deadline for networking
within Action 3, and some others found partners but their plans will be
clarified after the seminar. Just two of them want to use these contacts
for further private friendships.
ANALYSIS AND CONCLUSIONS
The
seminar, while plagued with many adaptations of the timetable due to the
working process of participants and while facing several difficulties to
find material needed for the rehearsals, was successful in creating a
common intercultural performance and generating new project ideas for
future cooperation.
The two
objectives were complementary and both of them were accomplished at the
end of the seminar. Even though most of the group was strongly motivated
to plunge straight into a networking project, the intercultural work in a
common project gave new ideas and new motivations to those few
participants who seemed to have achieved their main aims and objectives by
carrying out a local Group Initiative.
For the
participants having a very concrete idea on developing a Youth Newspaper,
this seminar was highly useful to meet other Group Initiatives working in
the same field of media and communication and helped them to put on paper
the first steps of their networking project.
For
those participants wanting to develop completely new ideas for networking
projects, it was very motivating to meet people working in different
artistic disciplines but having a common aim. The possibility to mix
different disciplines, to develop new skills, and especially to put them
into practice through a common project, stimulated their creativity and
helped them to innovate their previous local activities.
The
experience illustrates the effective nature of contact seminars, since
although the different artistic disciplines of participants could limit
the possible combinations of project partners, some concrete and
innovative project ideas were generated. The emphasis on meeting Group
Initiatives with similar aims and/or subjects related to various artistic
disciplines and allowing for a large degree of European contacts was
proven to be effective.
During
the entire seminar, the participants shared a permanently common
enthusiasm and good motivation for cooperating together on a real concrete
project. Future seminars could benefit from this first attempt to have a
common project to create during the seminar (besides the ideas that would
be generated for long term networking projects). The experience of
preparing something together in a very few days, with all the small and
big difficulties/obstacles they had to face, gave the participants a
concrete knowledge and practice of working and communicating at
international level. They also gained stronger relationships and
intercultural awareness.