Youth learning through Arts Erasmus Project

Project Title

Youth learning through Arts

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: Creativity and culture; International cooperation, international relations, development cooperation; Youth (Participation, Youth Work, Youth Policy)

Project Summary

Youth Learning Through Arts is European cooperation project that delivers arts based methods for youth and youth workers.

Project is a beginning of new European interaction with partner organisations and professionals of youth and cultural operators in participating countries as art educators and youth workers take part to three learning activities. In these learning activities for professionals, art educators and youth workers will work together with colleagues from other countries. They will learn from each other and create art methods for youth work together. They will test art methods and tools of their own art form to explore different relevant topics and improve their own tools with other art forms. Artistic educational programmes for young people are developed and youth workers are offered innovative programmes with creative predisposition for further development and initiatives. This way new interdisciplinary models of cultural and art education are pilot tested and presented in the project’s intellectual outputs – arts based workshops for youth and Ebooklets for professionals.

Need for this project is obvious: there are only few mobility programs for children’s or youth cultural operators in Europe and this project will show how much can be done with well planned and structured actions. National arts workshops are first delivered to a local youth group and then presented, discussed and made better/improved by a group of European arts educators participating to a learning activity. After the learning activity a local youth group in each participant country will experience a European art workshop created for them. Local youth groups are selected through the network of all participating organisations and all groups consist of young people who have already expressed their interest in being active, engaged with local, national and global issues and wish to gain more skills for preparing and presenting their own initiatives.

Arts workshops are produced in a pedagogical manner and will be taught to the participating youth groups’ youth workers so they can be used in the future. The main intellectual outputs of the project are three pedagogical Ebooklets, one created in each country and together forming one manual of art methods for youth work. Via these Ebooklets, other arts educators and youth workers can take up the methods presented. Ebooklets and video clips of the methods will be published on an open data and are free for everyone. Workshop results will be communicated in participating organisations communication channels and in project’s European multiplyer event in Brussels. There, an open seminar will be conducted to stakeholders and members of European parliament. Results of the project will be discussed and distributed to decision makers in European capital.

Along with the Ebooklets, all art workshops for youth will be documented and saved to participants’ web portals, you tube channels and Arts At Home web page (harrastakotona.fi). Digitalisation is in key role in documentation of arts based methods, youth experiences and in dissemination of project’s results. Digitalisation makes the project sustainable as its results continue having an impact after it is over.

The main objective of the project is to increase personnel’s professional capacity in using arts methods in youth work and add skills and tools from different art forms to further develop their know-how. Our goal is also to raise awareness of creative sector as a tool to approaching different issues with youth. It is a two way street of learning: youth sector learns from cultural operators and cultural operators learn from working with youth sector.

Professionals in want to learn best practices used in other countries. This project will raise the level of youth and youth culture in participating organisations and in their countries. Discussion between partners will be kept throughout the project via on-line meetings and in live meetings. Also, a discussion platform will be provided to participant youth groups.

Project makes cross-sectoral cooperation visible. Partnerships involve the most appropriate and diverse range of partners and hence benefit others from different experiences, profiles and specific expertise. Cross-sectoral cooperation is an important tool in deepening the relationship between youth and cultural sectors in each country. Funding is not usually available for cooperation projects and post COVID-19 times cooperation between culture and youth sectors is vital in the well-being of youth. In many ways this project brings hope for the future.

Target groups: youth workers, art educators, youth, personnel of the partner organisations, European stakeholders.

Project Website

https://lastenkulttuuri.fi/en/

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 209833 Eur

Project Coordinator

Association of Finnish Children’s Cultural Centers & Country: FI

Project Partners

• Luonto-Liitto ry
• Društvo za kulturo in izobraževanje IMPRO
• Osrodek Dokumentacji Sztuki Tadeusza Kantora CRICOTEKA w Krakowie
• MALOPOLSKI INSTYTUT KULTURY W KRAKOWIE
• PIONIRSKI DOM – CENTER ZA KULTURO MLADIH