About the project

From 21st of August – 4th of September 2011, “Art in Action”, an international youth exchange, has been held in Plemetina Village (Obiliq/Obilic Municipality, Kosovo). 60 young people participated in this exchange, including 25 artists and activists from Germany, France, Kosovo and Serbia and 35 young Roma, Ashkali and Egyptians from the local community.

During two weeks, youth participated in different artistic workshops focusing on problems faced by Plemetina community. Through music, film, step dance, photography, and environmental activism, they analyzed problems together and explored solutions. They are step-by-step taking their future in their hands.

On the 3rd of September, Art in Action participants presented all their stories in a street action on Mother Teresa Street (main pedestrian street in Pristina) in front of an audience of about 250 people as one youth art event, under a common slogan: Learn, Think, Act ! Plemetina to the Planet!

After the great experience during the Art in Action 1, idea for Art in Action 2 was born. GAIA Kosovo together with two other partner organizations VCV SCI Serbia and SCI Germany decided to continue the project.

The project Art in Action proposes to involve youth from Kosovo (Roma, Ashkali, Egyptians, Serbian, Albanian) together with youth and experts from Serbia, Germany and other European countries that share a common concerns and interests in their own countries: using Art and Culture as a creative tool enhancing public expression abilities, establishing creative form of socialization and self-development.

We are searching for new tools to encourage and enable young people to become active citizens, and to influence changes in their communities, for their rights and rights of other people.

During ten days participants will have a chance to experience building of creative campaign, raising awareness about human rights issues through different workshop (Comics, Stop Motion and Street Art performance).

About partner organizations:

Volunteers’ Centre of Vojvodina (VCV) is the Serbian branch of Service Civil International. The main idea of (VCV) is raising the level of consciousness about voluntarism to the optimum and waking up altruistic thoughts in young people through different activities, prejudice breaking, raising level of tolerance between different ethnicities in Vojvodina and giving more opportunities for cooperation to people with different ethnical and religious background, like voluntary work. More about VCV: http://volontiraj.rs/

SCI – Deutscher Zweig e.V. (SCI-D) is the German branch of Service Civil International, which is active with national branches in more than 35 countries worldwide. SCI-D organises around 50 international workcamps each year and sends volunteers to workcamps of branches and partner organisations in about 90 countries. Besides those short term voluntary services, SCI-D also organises medium and long term services in Germany and prepares and takes care of volunteers going abroad for up to one year. Voluntary services of SCI are organised in different fields e.g. in projects of ecology, social discrimination and anti-racism, work with children and youth, memorial places of former concentration camps and projects on north/south issues. More about SCI Germany: http://www.sci-d.de/cms/

Objectives of the project

– Raising awareness among participants from all countries on human rights issues, social justice, respect of environment and the possibility of taking action in the public space through creative and positive initiatives.

– Exchange best practices amongst participants from in the use of creative tools to and to learn from each other how to creatively approach the problem and its solution.

– Promote European cultural diversity, especially young creativity, mutual understanding, inclusion, tolerance and solidarity toward Roma, Ashkali, Egyptian and Serbian minorities in Kosovo.

– Highlight some of the key issues faced by the residents of the Plemetina camp and Plemetina village and give them visibility to international organization and local authorities using the output produce during the workshop as a lobbying tool.

Activities  of the creative campaign

The design of the campaign consists of different elements: identifying key messages of the campaign/or action, training on artistic method and elaboration of creative actions in working groups, realization of a concrete campaign/ performance.

Street performance – presentation of the campaign
In the end of the project will take place art exhibition, where all participants will show their work in the capital city (Pristina).

Recruitment of participants

We are looking for 6 motivated participants from Kosovo with great interest in participating in the creation of Art in Action 2 campaign and who are preferably activists and/or artists, if possible active in other organisations with similar working background and philosophy.

All participants selected for this project must meet the following criteria:

• Be 18 years old or older
• Be able to work in English language
• Preferably be active in an organisation and have the opportunity to be active in the future;
• Be interested in the Art in Action 2 workshops topics
• Have strong motivation to act as multiplier in the field of promoting peace work trough artistic actions.
• Be willing to prepare a short presentation or bring material to Kosovo and exchange good practices of projects he/she knows, or took part of, involving artistic actions, public space intervention and participation etc.  (Text, photo, music, collage, video, theatre, poetry, or any other project presentation support.)
• Be flexible and understandable towards tradition and culture of Plemetina communities
• Commit to actively participate to the project
• Preferably be interesting into Roma community and Minority rights in Europe.
• Perfectly understand that absence from the project program without valid excuse will result in exclusion from the seminar and withdrawal from rights for travel reimbursement.

If you want to apply please sen an email with the subject “Art in Action application” to the following addresses:

[email protected]

Applications should be sent at latest by Thursday, 23rd of August 2012.

A group of 6 participants will be selected on the basis of the profile outlined above by Art in Action team. The team will seek to ensure gender balance, different types of experiences and motivation, cultural backgrounds, organisations. The experiences, but primarily the motivations of the individual participants are among the most important criteria taken into consideration during the selection process.

Financial and practical conditions of participation

Food and accommodation are covered 100% by the organizers.

Travel costs are covered 100% (only for participants from Kosovo)

Participants will be accommodated in hosting Families, (2-5 participants per family). Hosting families will provide breakfast. Lunch and dinner will be prepared by cooking team: participants will have these two meals together.

Participants applying should be aware that living and working conditions in Plemetina village are different.  Electricity cuts are frequent. Water is running only couple of hours a day during the summer time.

Contact

If you have any questions regarding the project and your application, don’t hesitate to contact us! More information is available from: [email protected] or [email protected]