“All the world’s a stage …” – but what kind of World? Erasmus Project

Project Title

“All the world’s a stage …” – but what kind of World?

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 : Partnerships for Creativity

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; Youth (Participation, Youth Work, Youth Policy)

Project Summary

STAGE is a joint project by 4 organisations – coordinator Giving Hungary Foundation, Digitalna Inteligencia, Colegiul National “Kölcsey Ferenc”, Abacusan Studio – of 3 countries – Hungary, Slovakia, Romania.

The goal of the STAGE project is to develop a youth mentor program which reflects the life situations affecting young people (individuals and communities alike) in the COVID-19 pandemic. It would achieve this using the methods of theatre pedagogy, in the meeting point of digital culture and art.
In the course of the project, the participating partners will use a complex approach to attempt to develop solution proposals, adaptable even beyond the time span of the project, for use by youth communities not part of the project but receptive toward it, whether already existing or currently forming.

The COVID-19 pandemic threw people’s habitual lifestyles into chaos. Our communication habits have changed, the ways of maintaining interpersonal contact have been dramatically altered, but it also deeply affected our learning and work opportunities, methods and environment. In the pandemic period, communication became exclusively internet-based in many cases. As a result, many forms of social interaction were damaged; on the other hand, several new forms of communication became commonplace and widespread; forms of communications which will alter our long-term behavior beyond the pandemic period, and create an opportunity to form communities along new routes.
Along with the formation of new habits, the replacement of everyday life into online space brought new opportunities of self-realization and success, but also new challenges, new dangers and new difficulties, which require a much more conscious form of internet use, lifestyle, contact-keeping and content consumption.
In this new situation, telecommuting and home office arrangements, until then only existing as alternatives, became a widespread solution. However, this is not feasible in many professions and areas. In these case, many people’s jobs became endangered, and many became unemployed or their businesses, which provided their livelihood, collapsed or became unstable. This situation promotes the isolation and introversion of the affected people.

The pandemic situation, which justifies the necessity of our program, has caused problems and challenges across borders. Never before have the life situations and school, workplace and home problems of the inhabitants of one country so closely resembled those of other countries. This global lifestyle change requires us to find answers and solutions which can be implemented in a project built through several different approaches, and which includes the combined experiences of different countries and the knowledge of their experts. This is especially true of the cooperation between neighboring countries, who entered the pandemic from a similar economic-social situation. Intellectual outputs and good practice produced in a project which builds on the experiences of multiple countries is more likely to be applicable in other countries as well, compared to one that reflects only one country’s practices.
We consider it very important to bring into contact experts of the fields our project touches upon (youth assistance, internet safety, changes in the ways of staying in contact, suddenly-emerging social disadvantages), and that these experts should be of different nationalities. This would make it possible for them to share their knowledge and methods with each other. Staying in contact, which is necessary for cooperation, has now become very easy due to the new, online world, so the contacts and joint initiatives that began during the project can be upkept after the project’s closing without any problems.

The project’s basis is a set of three audience-inclusive, interactive theatre productions, separately created by each of the three theatre groups. These plays each deal with a life situation that emerged as a result of COVID-19 (as detailed above), and which concerns young people, shaping their life and development.
The three topics are as follows:
-internet safety,
-individual and communal responsibility and solidarity, existential changes
-keeping contact in online space during the dangerous period, and the effect of such in the period after it

In our project, we will process these topics through the means of art – specifically, theatre. The creative process of writing and producing a theatrical play provides opportunities for the members of the theatre groups to articulate their own experiences, to share their problems, to search for answers and ways out, to self-reflect, and to rely on their community.
For the secondary and tertiary target group, the artistic approach will be carried by the creation process of yet another theatrical play, based on the play and finished methodological materials produced during the project.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 202105 Eur

Project Coordinator

Giving Hungary (Adományozó Magyarország) Kulturális és Adománygyűjtő-szervező Alapítvány & Country: HU

Project Partners

• Abacusan Studio Oktatasszervezo Nonprofit Kft
• Colegiul National “Kölcsey Ferenc”
• DIGITALNA INTELIGENCIA