An Inspiring Journey of Learning: Bits from the Training Course 'Art for Community Development'

© Biljana Klisarova

It's been quite a while since the last time I attended one of these always inspiring events under Youth in Action program. I missed them. I missed the feeling of empowerment and being among the same-level crazy people that see solutions before problems, and give any at-the-first-glance crazy idea a healthy amount of soil to grow into a real initiative. Yes, you guessed right, I'm speaking about the brave change makers of the world that are sure the change can be made with their own bare hands (and minds). Maybe sometimes you just need a a little push, or sometimes you're the one that pushes someone if he/she is stuck in an ugly moment of stagnation. The training course 'Art for Community Development' gathered 28 young people from 8 countries, namely Czech Republic, Macedonia, Portugal, Spain, Latvia, France, Poland and Romania in a lovely small town Přerov in South-East Czech Republic to learn and discuss how art can help and is actually already helping to foster community development, develop new ideas for future cooperation and projects, and remind themselves and the rest of the world one simple truth 'JUST DO IT'!

Welcome to Czech Republic!

Prerov.

And here the journey starts. After one and a half wonderful days of walking in memories of my Prague (which used to be my Erasmus student exchange city in 2008), I finally jump on the train that will take me to the venue of the project. I am aware that I will be travelling with another participant from Czech Republic. When I finally find my place on the train, here she is - Marketa, full of youth and sparkles! As our journey is going to take a bit more than 2 hours, we both secretly hope we would get some sleep or get some passive intellectual benefit in form of a book, but it's not happening... the exchange of ideas and experiences has already started and it gets more and more exciting, so her learning book of French fairy tales in French and my Anne Frank stays untouched. The views outside the train window are constantly changing, creating a beautiful image of spaciness, where among the large fields of crop that has been recently sown and the majesty of mountains are hiding cute little rural towns. It's the end of April, and besides enjoying the colors of nature in different shades of green, what catches the eye is also the very frequent appearance of bright yellow rapeseed (also known as canola) fields that adds to the feeling of Czech Republic. As I get to know later, here they're mainly used for making oil. As I read on in some sources Czech Republic and Poland are mentioned as countries where this plant is highly cultivated. It doesn't beat France or Germany as top producers of the rapeseed in the EU, but it explains the reason why it becomes a significant part of the nature image of Czech Republic. But let's move on from the statistics on agriculture to more inspiring place - to Přerov and the training course 'Art for Community Development' (funded by Erasmus+ Youth in Action program).

Learning in Action... about Communities, Development and Art 

After a rather shy and laid-back morning of introduction on the first day, the activities evolved in a more intense pace around discovering the very complex natures of such terms as 'Community', 'Development' and 'Art' with different mind mapping exercises. These exercises gave the participants a chance to brainstorm on these terms and discuss the options and solutions they came up with in a group, as well as get to know successful and not so successful examples of using art as tool for community development. It lead to a conclusion that the context matters and the development starts when you know the needs of the community, and more specifically the needs, fears, interests and limits of each community member individually, which was also highly emphasized in educational materials presented at the various training sessions. 

© Biljana Klisarova

A particularly interesting or I'd say amusing for me was the exercise in national teams which aimed to spot the problems each country has and present it in a concise way to other national groups. Beside the problems we spotted as a Latvian group in our society of which some were in big terms very similar to problems of other countries participating in the training - like youth-related issues, socially irresponsible behavior of companies, corruption, the amusing part was the Latvian group itself - one Latvian not living in Latvia, one Latvian living in Latvia and one somewhere in between these two categories - which itself represents indirectly a major problem in Latvian society. Yes, I'm speaking of immigration - an issue is so serious that is already handled on a governmental level, though not very successfully so far. And a funny thing is we even did not mention it as an issue. I guess the EU's free mobility concept is more attractive than addressing the re-immigration issues of the nation. On the contrary to Latvia, Spanish participants besides naming youth unemployment and massive de-industrialization, mentioned immigration as one of the main issues in Spain. Besides that, we got to know that in Portugal the development is oriented mostly on tourism and not on the development or improvements created for communities that live in these areas. In France on the other hand, the centralization of culture in the cities that as a result leaves out rural areas was emphasized as the major issue, and Macedonia shocked with its on-going student/nation riots which request for a major change, including the fall of the current government.

And who are you?

Many different issues were presented, but the training evolved further focusing on what, you, yourself as an individual and a community member can do or what kind of resources you can provide to make a change. Especially interesting for me was a workshop that required to write down resources you have, e.g. you're a photographer, you have experience in management of projects, you are a professional beer tapper, you're a graphic designer (at least 10) and then try to write down ideas in which ways these resources can be used for helping the community. This exercise seemed to me two-folded - as on one hand it made you think of ideas how the features you have can help the community, and on the other hand - this exercise reminded yourself what you have in terms of experience, or knowledge and that it is actually of a great value.

A part of workshops were also aimed at 'finding an artist in yourself', like in the exercises on storytelling that required describing other person in the group by just using 5 senses (touch, smell, taste, see, hear), or write a story about an object important in your community from the perspective of this object or describe an event from a perspective of a 3 year-old kid, 40 year-old man and 80 year-old woman. Similarly, different workshops were performed about visualization and performance art, the latter resulting in a street performance after the end of workshop sessions with a great assistance of a young performance artist Mischa Badasyan.

© Biljana Klisarova

When these values were found and acknowledged, it was the right moment to come up with new ideas for projects that would foster community development. No less, no more, but 28 new project ideas were brought on the table, and new ties were even more strengthened when participants teamed up to collectively develop some of these ideas further.

To sum up, in the six active days of the training through different kinds of workshops, role-plays, thematic exercises we got to know more about our own communities and those of the other countries and the different and similar problems they encounter. We also tried to apply various forms of art as a tool for personal and collective development, gained an understanding and dived in-deep search for solutions, which resulted in a large bunch of new project ideas that could help communities to develop in one way or the other.

Intercultural Learning & New and Old Myths (re)Discovered 

A Cherry Tree.

Of course the first country and its 'traditionalities' that comes under the investigation is the hosting country - Czech Republic. Yes, beer is significantly cheaper than, for example, in the Netherlands where for a pint you pay at least 4,50 up to 5 Euros, whereas in Czech Republic the same amount is just below 1 Euro (and it's the price for most of the tapped beers, the bottled ones are even cheaper). Regarding the myth existing about Czech Republic outside of Czech Republic that the beer is cheaper than water - in some cases it might be very true!

While beer drinking was an optional evening activity, during the City Game we got to know much more about Přerov and Czech traditions. For example, on 1st May in Czech Republic - every girl must be kissed under a blossoming cherry tree, which for an outsider might seem a bit weird but very cute ancient tradition that has been kept even up to nowadays. Some sources state that if a girl is not kissed under a blossoming cherry tree on the 1st May, she would wither and die in twelve months. I don't spot any girl being kissed under a cherry tree on this day, but I don't lose a hope it is done without public participation, otherwise it's too bad if the scary part of the legend becomes true.

Slacklining in action.

Speaking of the trends of present day - it seems that slacklining is a new and healthy fashion for young people in which the participants of the training course could also take part, since one of the Czech participants Stepan is a member of the local group of enthusiasts practicing this sport.

Speaking of other interesting myths re-discovered, there's something about French people and juggling. I have noticed this already before with other French people I met in my life on various kinds of projects or life situations... and the French participants of this training course were not an exception. I had a courage to ask what is the cause of this French 'trend', and a participant Geoffrey from France suggested that it might be a consequence of the peace revolution in the 1960-ties in France and the Hippy movement that evolved after that. As a way of peaceful protesting people just went to parks and started juggling. Seems like this tradition has lived through several generations already. Nonetheless, it seemed like the same revolution has touched some parts of Portugal - as the participant Rita showed her full expertise in various kinds of juggling and was able to carry away with her passion almost the whole group of participants that dared to try. After all, it's not that hard, and looks pretty effective, huh?

French People Juggling :) © Biljana Klisarova

Speaking of sharing national goodies in international contexts - this kind of activity also took place at the training course. Participants of the training course had a chance to try French cheese and wine (hearing that it's French already suggested something of a sophisticated taste and I believe it had put an extra pressure on French people, since they know it. But I believe they scored great points, so the their myth is kept alive even when everyone went home), some Portuguese sausage, sardines and cookies, Romanian sweets, Polish and Czech alcoholic beverages that were nicely introduced through a Polish drinking game... which told a story about the King and the Queen travelling in a two-horse Carriage... and now 'Driver, driver, my dear driver...' will be definitely known and used in other international settings.

Trying Out New Roles...

Brainstorming on Reverse Assumptions.

One day of the training course was planned around activities in a local-high school together with the students of this school. The activities were performed mainly by the facilitators of the training and also by some of the participants of the training. As the activities were divided in two classrooms the same as the participants of the training, I could only follow what was happening in one of the classrooms. The facilitator from Latvia Inese performed an interesting workshop called 'Reverse Assumptions' that aimed first to define at least 5 characteristic qualities of a particular place, e.g. a library, beauty salon, hotel, restaurant... and then to write down statements that are completely opposite of those 5 characteristic features... and the trick is to create a new concept of a place using these reverse assumptions. It was a group task, and I must say some of the resulting concepts were pretty viable for the real world. Me and the participant from Macedonia (Bulgaria) Iva were those few participants that tried out their workshop facilitation skills in practice. Iva spoke about Personal Branding and Public Speaking, and I introduced the concept of Social Entrepreneurship as a method for community development to the group of youngsters and the participants of the training. These workshops consisted of theoretical bits combined with theme-related practical activities. What I learned from this experience of 'performing art' is to be flexible and have a Plan B, if Plan A lacks time to be implemented. After all, it was an interesting and a bit challenging learning-by-doing experience that also included the meeting of the most important elements of the local community - young people, and let's be optimistic - the probable future change makers...

What's next?

To everyone's regret the departure day eventually came. Crazy ideas kept bursting around and the bridges were built around potential new projects and cooperation possibilities. With this positive vibe I believe all the participants returned home. So what's next? Well, for me personally things started to happen more dynamically... around the new things I've learned and new opportunities I got to know about. Just right after returning back to the Netherlands, I enrolled myself in Massive Open Online Course on 'Erasmus+ Funding Opportunities for Youth' (as I've heard it's the first but not the last one, so there's a chance to enroll for the next ones, if interested) that I got to know about thanks to a link shared by Macedonian participant Biljana. Besides that there is a hope that the project ideas we discussed with the participants of the training course will get some productive soil to develop further into real short or long-term international community-developing projects with an impact! Well, inspiration to change things is really there... and the simple truth really is... 'JUST DO IT'! :)