Intercultural Dialogue in Europe

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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.

Main considerations for the design of the program

• The programme should begin with the presentation of the former Group Initiatives of participants and their artistic skills
• 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
• The seminar should promote and enhance the understanding for each others’ work with different ‘horizons’ and cultures
• 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
• Time and space to develop common ideas/plans for long term networking activities within Action 3
• 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
• 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:

1.) "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.

2.) "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.

"3.) 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:

• Youth Newspaper on-line
• Travelling Theatre around Europe
• Social Awareness of children in local communities

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.