Workshops

Austria

Creative Writing and Theater

march to may 2020

Target: Women of all ages from 15 – 99  (mainly refugee or migrant women) with a special focus on teenagers from neighbouring communities.
Where: Stand129 (map)

We will organize three writing-workshops with all the same target in order to connect with different contexts and to reach the most diverse kind of migrants. It is very important to create a save space to make the women open up and feel comfortable enough to share and write their stories and to share their thoughts. Through multidisciplinary approach, we will come slowly into writing. We will try out different methods of creative writing. We will follow a flexible structure, which will help the participants to create together a basic storyline and will help each one of them to find her placed her own mode of expression. It will be improved, step by step, by all the different cultural baggage which all participants will introduce.
Afterwards we will bring the stories we wrote to another layer, by creating pictures who are an addition. These pictures will be created through performance, photography, or any other visual add on. 

Target: Women of all ages from 15 – 99  (mainly refugee or migrant women) with a special focus on teenagers from neighbouring communities.
Where: Stand129 (map)

Series of workshops where every single workshop can be seen as an entity of its own. This means that one can join each and every workshop without any previous experience or knowledge of the workshops so far. However, a strong central topic gives continuity between all the workshops and makes it possible for participants who take part in every (or most of the) workshops to develop and go deeper and deeper into the subject. Everybody is invited to bring his or her (life)story, current subjects or preoccupations, thoughts and wishes with them.
The Theatre improvisation technique is suitable to enable active and autonomous play in groups and to express personal opinions through play. In this way participants are able to reflect on the group’s social context and to develop a new sense of self-confidence through the world of theatre.

Greece

Interdisciplinary Theatre

february to april 2020

Target: migrant and non-migrant adults, focusing on young adults (18-25) and women
Where: ARSIS (map)

Our Workshops explore the projection of personal stories to a particular place, and the connection between the subjective point of view and the collective notion of history. An attempt to genuinely connect to each other within an intimate space for exchanges, memory transfer and creativity. To meet and become fellow investigators of sounds, images, testimonies and personal accounts at the transit place where people and their stories intersect, tracing incomplete maps of territories marked by loss, daily struggles and hope. Participants are our “guides” who can share their experiences and visions of their territory, be it their place of origin, dwelling or the one they’re heading to. The work will be developed on two levels in parallel: the physical and the digital storytelling.

Italy

Theater

february to may 2020

Target: migrant and non-migrant teenagers from 13 to 18 years old
Where: CAG Brescia (Aggregation Youth Center) (map)

On the contrary, the wind blows on the earth, the wind blows on the lands, on all the lands of which the world is composed. But is the wind only one? Or are the winds so many, and each place has its own? What do the Scirocco and the Tramontana say when they meet or when, perhaps, they collide? Each brings with it sand, dust, signs and thoughts, stories and legends of the lands from which he took off and from which he began his journey. And stories and legends, so carried along with sand and dust, travel on the wings of the wind, and intertwine and overlap and together they struggle and dance. And they ruffle the lands that touch and fly, and they mess up the hair of those who let themselves be ruffled by life. From the life that goes, that travels, that does not stop and does not let itself be harnessed by the boundaries or stopped by walls and barriers. And these thoughts, these stories are us, all of us who are interwoven with stories and give stories to flesh and material and soul and voice. And we will tell you and share words and emotions with you. So, we just ask you to sit down and listen.

Target: migrant and non-migrant teenagers from 13 to 18 years old
Where: CAG Brescia (Aggregation Youth Center) (map)

Starting from the Object: objects that retain stories, beyond their form or function, objects that change over time, as well as the memories contained in them, objects that release energy and movement, even if they are still. We ask participants to bring items to their loved ones and then objects dear to their loved ones, when they arrived in this “new” country. Placing yourself in front of those objects as observers, redefine them. We will interview participants about why their choices. Collect these words and help them make a little story, their story. We will build the pages of the script from there. In the background a play: “Twelfth Night” by Shakespeare, an initial pretext, the shipwreck, disperses the sheets of the script, and loses the navigators’ objects. It follows the clumsy attempt to reconstruct the story, between misunderstandings and confused memories. We do not know where they will land, but their journey will be mythical.

Target: migrant and non-migrant teenagers from 13 to 18 years old
Where: CAG Brescia (Aggregation Youth Center) (map)

A storm. A shipwreck that changes lives. A magical island that reconnects the threads of existence in unpredictable ways. A final redemption. These are the elements of the of Tempest by W. Shakespeare. We would like to use these sounding keywords in order to stimulate the participants to rewrite its own stories of exclusion and redemption. We would like the feelings, the emotions, the desires of young teenagers gently reveal themselves to tell about our age made of very few magic and even less hopes.

Portugal

Music and storytelling

January to june 2020

Target: migrant and non-migrant community, from 8 to 80
Where: Clube Desportivo da Mouraria (map) and online

Workshops with Batucaria, a multicultural and intergenerational Orchestra, focusing exploration of sounds, instrumental and body percussion, voice and lyrics. With the worldwide pandemic the rehearsals of this multicultural and intergenerational Orchestra started to happen online. Renovar a Mouraria also developed the activity “Mundos Daqui e Além Mar” with the participation of 31 migrants and non-migrants, from 23 different nationalities, via a homemade video project, a literary magazine and a youtube channel.