Who needs empowerment? Exploring Gender and Power through/in Art Erasmus Project

Project Title

Who needs empowerment? Exploring Gender and Power through/in Art

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : Strategic Partnerships for youth

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2020

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses; Creativity and culture; Gender equality / equal opportunities

Project Summary

CONTEXT
Power is a fundamental concept in social science in the same sense in which Energy is the fundamental concept in physics (Russell). In all societies, power is distributed unequally between people: they have different influence over decisions, different rights and duties (Eriksen). Gender is one of the dimensions that seems to organise this inequality of power distribution, with women tending to have lower rank and less power than men, across different times and places. Though in many European countries there was a perception that these differences have been overcome, the explosion of the #MeToo movement showed even in Europe, the subject is not quite settled. What’s more, previously muted gender minorities have highlighted new forms of exclusions and discrimination.

PARTICIPANTS
Primary target group: 100 youngsters (from 18 to 30) from different cultural and social backgrounds, from gender minorities and of heterosexual identity.
Secondary target group: 300 youth workers, (museum) facilitators, art educators.

OBJECTIVES
1. Offer young people creative and appealing ways to understand the concepts related to gender
2. Raise awareness about how gender is connected to power: how people today still live discrimination and oppression because of their gender identity
3. Empower young people to develop their gender identity in safe and creative ways, to face challenges, oppressions related to their gender identity
4. Develop understanding, empathy and solidarity towards others with different types of gender identities and sexual orientations to step up against oppressions that others suffer. Gain tools to communicate about gender related inequalities and challenges.
5. Offer youth workers and youth leaders comprehensive tools to address issues of gender and power with young people in safe and appealing ways.

METHODS
We use a threefold art-based, non-formal, participatory method. Artworks are polyvalent and equivocal, allow for multiple meanings and approaches to emerge, and thus can help to visualize messages and tackle problems with detachment. The participatory approach emphasises experience and active participation of young people in order to imprint new knowledge and to model everyday life situations. Non-formal methods help to increase autonomy and empowerment of the participants where they take part actively in the process of seeking alternative solution for gender related conflicts and discrimination.

ACTIVITIES AND RESULTS
– Using art works to explore and define key concepts related to gender and power, build creative forms to learn this vocabulary and get acquainted with basic phenomena.
– Designing thematic itineraries in museums where engaging with artworks triggers debates and offers resources for empowerment by opening historical and cultural perspective through ages
– Producing audio guides where young women from various backgrounds and sexual orientations interpret artworks to uncover cultural diversity through Europe in the representation and interpretation of gender/power questions
– Initiation to a creative self-reflecting method where making art becomes a process for gender empowerment: in a series of 35h co-construction workshops young people will have the opportunity to reflect on how gender affects their life, and to transform their observations according to their desires and imagination.
– Invention of an innovative debates where artists/curators/collectors use an artwork to discuss the current professional power dynamics and the connection with gender within the art world.
– Preparing art-campaigns co-developed by youth and artists on the main topics of the project. Delivering a toolkit to build a replicable model for art-campaign making, embedded in specific pedagogical objectives.
– Packaging all the pedagogical materials developed during the project in a 15-hour training course and an appealing “Playbook” for youth workers/leaders, art educators, museum facilitators.

IMPACT
YOUNG PEOPLE
– self-confidence in building their gender and sexual identities,
– gender awareness (understanding of concepts, capacity in deconstructing stereotypes, and critically thinking about gender roles)
– identifying / practising strategies to overcome gender oppressions
YOUTH WORKERS
– better understanding of gender identities and its connection to power
– incorporation of non-formal art education methods in their trainings
ART INSTITUTIONS
– new methods and tools for art institutions to value their pedagogical potential, to create thematic visits exploring gender and power issues
– awareness raising of the problems encountered by disadvantageous and/or gender minority young artists in the art sectors

SUSTAINABILITY
Partner organisations integrate the results of the project in their work and training offer. A key objective is to approach policy makers, institutions responsible for dispensing initial training for adult educators, with the diplomas foreseen by the national legislations

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 256722 Eur

Project Coordinator

de l’art et d’autre & Country: FR

Project Partners

• ELAN INTERCULTUREL
• MOH Associazione Socioculturale
• MESTO ZENSK, DRUSTVO ZA PROMOCIJO ZENSK V KULTURI
• UNIVERSIDAD COMPLUTENSE DE MADRID