“Creative Youth Goes International” – youth exchange to develop artistic skills and intercultural experience
From 29th of September till 8th of October EBA Europäische Bildungsakademie gGMBH organized a youth exchange on the topic “Creative Youth goes International” for young people from different EU and neighboring countries who were eager to make use of their artistic skills, participate in non-formal learning activities and to gain intercultural experience.
29.09 – 08.10.2012 Berlin, Germany
From 29th of September till 8th of October EBA Europäische Bildungsakademie gGMBH organized a youth exchange on the topic “Creative Youth goes International” for young people from different EU and neighboring countries who were eager to make use of their artistic skills, participate in non-formal learning activities and to gain intercultural experience. The event gathered 36 participants from Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Germany, Poland and Slovakia. For 10 days the young people took actively taking part in a variety of activities from group-building and creativity workshops to discussion groups and excursions. For the main part of the program participants could choose among five creativity workshops in the fields of music, theater, media, graffiti-paintings and textile design and then worked together in mixed country groups for the whole duration, developing their own artistic concepts and expressing their views. The last day of the youth exchange was dedicated to the presentations of the outcomes of the workshops. The presentations were well-prepared and showed how dedicated the groups had worked and how much they had enjoyed it. We would like to share with you a brief report made by one of the participants:
“I was really inspired by these 10 days in Berlin. We have done so many activities and have met so many new people! The days of the youth exchange started with getting-to-know each other, expectations, agreements about the program and information on the activities prepared for every day. After that we were doing different energizers and warm-ups to get ready for work. Then, during the morning and afternoon sessions our group was creatively working together in the creativity workshops. We had all the necessary equipment available as well as professional leaders conducting the workshops which were really flexible and were trying to follow the group dynamics and negotiate everything with the group members.
Beside the workshops in the youth house we carried out “special missions” in the “local community” of Berlin: for example the group of textile workshop went to the city to make photos for the collages they printed on the T-shirts produced and the group of media workshop was given the task to conduct interviews with local people on the street. Besides these activities one day was dedicated to a city-game: the group was divided into several smaller teams and each team received a route. We followed the routes and documented the places and landscapes – it was just great, very interesting and enjoyable as many of us had already visited Berlin before but did not have any idea about the places we were led to and got new insights in German culture and society.
As a result of the youth exchange each small group produced some piece of art: a theater play, a song, self-painted T-shirts, self-made graffities and a big collage made of pictures of the group as well as two videos made by participants of the media workshop.
We also had a chance to get to know each other’s countries, culture and traditions better and to talk about stereotypes existing about each of our countries/people. For example during the first workshop we had to present not our but another country and to say what we knew about it, sharing our ideas of their life style and culture. Then during the cultural evening we also had a chance to try local food, hear local music and watch videos brought along by the participants. We also produced some kind of posters with the most common expressions in the languages of the participants and put them on the wall in order to greet one another in the native language.
The participants became very close friends and we hope to keep in touch in future! There are hundreds of pictures left as well as videos and a lot of other memories. As a result we made so many new friends, got so many positive emotions, fell in love with Berlin and spent a great time in Germany! Thank you for giving us this possibility and we hope to come here again!”
This project has been funded with support from the European Commission. This publication reflects the views only of the author, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.
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