TRAINING MATERIALS ON CULTURAL ETHNICITY AND MIGRATION ITINERARIES
A narrative Report
This output is in many ways the heart of the project, as it builds strongly on the impact of the previous output, and is based on the active collaboration of young people. Indeed, the young people who participated in the initiation workshops can now take a different role, becoming from participant active contributor in a series of joint workshops with the project team.
The training material is the result from the joint workshops proposes innovative art based pedagogical activities to tackle the cultural diversity characteristic of our society with two main connected methods: a) through thematic museum itineraries
b) through thematic urban walks.
You will find below the experiences of the 3 partners (Austrian, French and Hungarian’) , good reading!
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Contenu
Vienna-STAND129......
Général description...... 4
Objectives...... 5
Experience/s during the workshop most appreciated...... 5
Difficulties found in the development. How to solve them in future Workshops...... 6
How does the Workshop add a new way of thinking the city? Innovative aspects...... 9
Does our Workshops accomplish the indicators we managed in the first part of the Project? (see good practices and foundation Bricks)...... 9
Why do you think your Workshop adds diversity to the city? Diversity aspects...... 10
Open Concepts that the Workshop has oponed and can be applied onwards, in future Workshops on the city...... 10
Escale à Franconville Paris – Elan Interculturel
Général description...... 11
Objectives...... 16
Experience/s during the workshop most appreciated...... 16
Difficulties found in the development. How to solve them in future Workshops...... 17
How does the Workshop add a new way of thinking the city? Innovative aspects...... 18
Does our Workshops accomplish the indicators we managed in the first part of the Project? (see good practices and foundation Bricks)...... 19
Why do you think your Workshop adds diversity to the city? Diversity aspects...... 19
Open Concepts that the Workshop has oponed and can be applied onwards, in future Workshops on the city...... 19
Hidden Heroes in the 8th district
Général description...... 20
Objectives...... 22
Experience/s during the workshop most appreciated...... 23
Difficulties found in the development. How to solve them in future Workshops...... 24
How does the Workshop add a new way of thinking the city? Innovative aspects...... 24
Does our Workshops accomplish the indicators we managed in the first part of the Project? (see good practices and foundation Bricks)...... 25
Why do you think your Workshop adds diversity to the city? Diversity aspects...... 26
Open Concepts that the Workshop has oponed and can be applied onwards, in future Workshops on the city...... 26
Favorite Places
Vienna – STAND129
v General description
Right after finishing the workshop series in the museum (mumok – Museum moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien) and with an art mediator (IO3), we started the sessions in Favoriten, Vienna’s 10th district, with the same group of young adults we had worked before (IO 4). The cooperation between Spacelab, Mumok and Stand 129 went on, although now the focus was much more on the youngster’s environment and therefore, the 10th district of Vienna.”Favoriten” is a district on the outskirts of Vienna with little cultural or art spaces. It is not – as the name would suggest – one of the most favourite districts of Viennese people, it rather has to fight against its bad reputation. The title of the project was supposed to reframe this prejudice.
The frame of our workshop was diversity with a focus on migration, ethnicity and multi-culturality, whereas the topic focused on identities, feelings and the city to explore this field.
The workshops took place from 10. September 2015 to 13. Oktober 2015, each week six to 12 hours, in Spacelab (an offer for adolescents and young adults who have an
extended demand for support and assistance in planning their educational and vocational future), Stand 129 and 10th district of Vienna, as well as at MUMOK (Museum of Modern Arts) for project closure.
The project was realized with 12-14 youngsters in the age of 16 to 25 years old. The participants are from a mixed group of girls and boys, who dropped out of school or are unemployed. They are currently in a program that helps the youths to find a way back to the education system or find a job.
v Objectives
In this part of our project we focused a lot on the participants themselves. One of our main objectives was to raise the awareness of the importance of communication and encourage the participants in the process of building relations with themselves, each other and with the community.
In concrete terms, at the beginning of IO4 we evaluated IO3 with the participants, using the target method (see evaluation methods IO3) as well as evaluation through Sound & Movement and informal talks. In the first session, we cooperated again with the art mediator, who this time came to the participant’s place (Spacelab). Our objectives were raising the awareness of identities: to create an open platform in which the youngsters would be able to talk about their feelings, own wills and wishes. A further aim was to learn and use concrete tools of participatory video making, sound and visual storytelling and finally to make a video about identities and feelings in the city and the area they live in from their perspective.
v Experience/s during the workshop most appreciated
During the Silent Staging* exercise, the participants first asked about the meaning of the task and why they should do it. The art mediator explained that they could see it as a game and should just listen to the rules and follow them. We talked about the experiences afterwards and participants stated that they liked the interaction and the story that developed. Even though some of them were still not sure about the “higher meaning” (as they said) they respected the rules, did not talk throughout the whole exercise and seemingly enjoyed themselves as some actions where commented by laughter or grumbling. They learned that sometimes there is no need to understand the higher meaning of a task to do it well and they
Later, the participants had a very short time to think and realize a video clip in the city. They had only their body maps (which they realized during one workshop session) and masks and cameras and in three different groups they made all in all 10 videos. They were all totally different to each other. We realized that this time, with the objects that they created by themselves, they were more concentrated while filming outside. They were proud of situating the body maps in the public space and seeing the material (video, film) they had done.
The videos and photos that were shot in the afternoon once again showed the creativity of the participants.
Description of the tasks:
* Silent staging: The art mediator marked a space in the room with a white line and provided ten objects. One after another, the participants could either 1) place one of the objects in the space 2) move one of the objects inside of the space, or 3) take one out of the space. Every participant could just do one movement at a time. Without speaking a story was developed and participants reacted to the actions that were done before.
In a second step we enlarged the space and could use everyone in the room, together with the objects. With the same rules, participants therefore could also stage their peers, place them in the space, move them around or take them out of the space. Silently, the space was negotiated as well as they could experiment with how far they felt comfortable putting others in a position; if, when, and by whom those places in the space were released again by someone who took them out of the space again etc.
Staging in public space: In the afternoon, the participants were sent out to different places in the neighbourhood with their body maps, masks, and some of the objects (each group was given one of the objects we had used in the first exercise). They were told to stage them, similar to the exercises in the morning, but in public space. They were given cameras to record their actions (both video and photos). The settings were: the park, a parking lot in front of a hardware store and a bus station. The different settings lead to interesting interpretations and different outcomes.
Another very important and exciting part of the project was the main shooting day. In two groups, we went outside to the city to film. One group was responsible for the interviews. The other was responsible for the filming of/ and within the public space with their masks and to collect material that transports emotions.
Comparing with the “planning part”, filming was much easier, as we were able to go out to the public space, move around and play with the environment. Being in public space while filming is always a challenge for youths and usually they develop great energies while doing it. One group decided to interview people from the district and ask them “if they are happy in Vienna”. The youngsters were quite brave and open to interview strangers on the street. The other group who decided to film themselves with the masks to collect additional material for the video was also very brave. They enjoyed to be in front of the camera with a different role at the places which they currently use without noticing in their daily lives (as a bus stop or a pedestrian underpass). The masks gave them the freedom to move like another person on the street, close to strangers. They enjoyed it so much that even some of the participants who didn`t want to be in front of the camera at first, had forgotten about it and walked in front of the camera, between the crowd to be filmed.
We were more than 3 hours walking and filming in the public space. For the first time, they worked so hard and without playing with their cell phones that they even forgot the time (and the lunch break!) J. Also, they were talking with us in a very open way about themselves, their experiences even in private, which shows the trust they had gained throughout the project. It showed us for the first time that we were not only the “workshop trainers” but also friends to them.
v Difficulties found in the development. How to solve them in future Workshops.
One of the hardest parts of the project was the planning of the common video production. Even if we had two small groups it was hard to get a common decision about the videos in each group. The youngsters had completely different ideas for a video or they were just quiet and didn’t contribute to the discussion. We didn`t want to interfere to much in their planning process. So we tried to help them with asking different questions. Language was also a big issue, as many of the youngsters do not speak German as a first language or generally find it hard to talk about abstract concepts and visualize ideas to get a concrete plan. After nearly 2 hours nevertheless, both groups knew what they wanted to do. They both had their stories and storyboards in the hand. Even if we tried to loosen up the conceptual part by methods such as speed dating, it was still hard work and many of the youths did not want to share their stories at first.
In preparation of this part, we already knew that this conceptual phase would be hard, so we prepared different activities:
1- Speed dating: We wanted to learn about extra ordinary experiences of the participants within the city. So we prepared some questions to ask each other in 3 minutes. After the speed dating rounds, each of the youths was invited to tell the stories that s/he remembered or that most resonated with their own personal experience to the group. Through that process, we collected common issues and clustered them, talking more deeply about the experiences and issues to have a basic concept for the video content.
2- Fixing the concept for the videos and preparing a Storyboard: We came together with the participants and made brainstorming in two groups, about how we can bring all these experiences, and all the topics we have been dealing with until that day, together in a short film. We sorted out which kind of a film they would like to make, how and where. They were divided in two groups to prepare 2 different storyboards and planned everything necessary to shoot a video. At the end of the session, both groups came together and presented their respective concept and storyboards to the others. In the end we discussed together how each of them could be improved.
Even if it was meant to be fun and energetic, surprisingly the participants were very shy during the speed dating and some of them seemed not to feel comfortable at all. Even if they had have many ideas for their video during the whole time we had spent together, when it came to the planning, they couldn’t find a common ground. Some of these issues were because of language difficulties and because of the shyness of some of the participants to talk in the group, explain and defend their ideas.
But in the end, both groups decided on a topic and a way to go. It was very nice to see that the questions they wanted to ask were the same questions which we had asked ourselves at the beginning of this project (still in the conception of the workshops for IO3) when we defined the aims of this whole project. We never talked about these questions openly with the participants, but kept them in mind during all of our activities. It was very nice to see, that in the end of the project nearly all of them were in the head of the youngsters. So even if it was a hard task to prepare the storyboards it was quite a big pleasure to observe this process.