ACADEMY+ Erasmus Project

Project Title

ACADEMY+

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 2019

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Youth (Participation, Youth Work, Youth Policy) ; New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses; Research and innovation

Project Summary

The goal of Academy + is to develop a complex Merged Social Art Practices Methodology for the training of youth workers working with underprivileged youth. The idea of the project is coming from a time-tested partnership of four organisations (a theatre company, a socially engaged international artistic hub, a social art association and a university), their members directly dealing with and/or setting up projects for underprivileged youth. Our partnership is due to a former European project, EXCEPT and its successor, Academy for Actors of Social Change, an Erasmus+ KA1 Mobility of Youth Workers project repeating and evolving from year to year for four years now. The partners’ shared intents and needs resulted in the current project, aiming to develop a merged methodology based upon the experience and common experimenting of the latter, pointing to a distinct direction.

The final result of ACADEMY+, consisting of a process aiming to further develop the project partners’ already used social art practices they are applying in their daily work with underprivileged youth and to experiment together by complementing each others knowledge. This knowledge exchange has for its goal to develop a Merged Methodology and to create a written toolkit for trainers and youth workers to be disseminated and used not only in partner organisations’ daily work, but also far beyond. Therefore the tangible outcome of ACADEMY+ will be an online Social Art Practices Manual to be used by project partners to facilitate their collaboration in the yearly Academies, but also in their daily work and beyond. This open-access manual will also enable trainers of youth workers and youth workers themselves (these categories often overlapping) to develop themselves and expand their own professional toolsets. Indirectly, but not less significantly the project will also benefit those underprivileged youngsters whom are the target of the latter.

The SAP Manual – as we foresee it – will consist of five parts: four of them will give an insight of the methodologies used by the partner organisations – Drama and Theatre In Education brought in by the main applicant, Sensory and Image Theatre coming from the Spanish group, NarrActive Creation brougth be the French partner and Forum Theatre Techniques delivered by the Turkish team – and give advise on how and why to use them with underprivileged youth. The fifth part will be the one explaining the Merged SAP Methodology, the one that will be worked out by the project staff in sight of composing a complex method containing the elements of the separate techniques that can support and complement each other, therefore take youth work on another level. The SAP Manual will be an innovation not only in our partnership, but also in youth work in general, and not only in reason of the new, merged methodology, but also since not all the techniques used by the project partners are known and practised in all partner countries. Thus, with the creation and collection of material we are aiming to contribute to the training of youth workers – and therefore to the growth of underprivileged young people – in all partner countries and beyond.

As for our collective, the most effective way is learning by doing, which is the principle we based our Academy for Actors of Social Change programme. Though we have to realize that in order to ensure a wider access to the methodologies as well as a sustainability for the programme and for youth workers’ training in general, we have to provide an extensive description of what we are doing. Therefore all textual parts of the SAP Manual will be complemented by images, videos, sound files and/or drawings – things we eventually deem useful to the comprehension and application of the method in question. The recognition of the fact that we all have different ways of learning and that the era of digital technology has formed us in a way that we need information that is varied, colorful and vivid enough to grasp our attention. By this format we intend to trick our perceptions and bring learning from manuals closer to the methods of Non-Formal Learning, whose principles we all strongly believe in. This way, by adding to the textual level any media that proves to be necessary and useful for the understanding of the methods, we expect that we will be more effective in helping the future users of the SAP Manual to apply its content in their own daily practice.

Thus Academy+ and the creation and dissemination of the Social Art Practices Manual would benefit not only the staff members, partners and associates of the participating organisations, but also those who will come to know the manual in the future either via our dissemination events or the online platforms where it will be available. Herewith we are aiming to contribute to the promotion and recognition of youth work as well as to the efficiency of youth workers’ training and to youth work as a whole.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 138002 Eur

Project Coordinator

PRO PROGRESSIONE KULTURALIS NONPROFIT KOZHASZNU KFT & Country: HU

Project Partners

• DI MINI TEATRO
• ASOCIACIÓN RAÍCES DE CORIANDER
• ANADOLU UNIVERSITY