Dance & Creativity as Tools for Youth

About this training course…
"Dance & Creativity as Tools for Youth" expresses the main belief of the organizations gathered in this partnership: we achieve better results with youth when delivering activities and workshops based on dance which combined with multiple forms of arts.
Hence this “T.F.T.”, a Training For Trainers using Art as an empowering Tool whose main themes are:
1) "Creativity, Art & Culture" because both the participating youth workers and the young people entrusted to them are lovers of them and do dance, performing arts and, more generally, creativity the focus of their interests. Although besieged by suffocating consumerism and the prospect of a job (when available) that is well-controlled and regulated, we believe in the arts as a key dimension for the realization of life, as an opportunity for growth and training, bearer and disseminator of positive and healthy values such as beauty, chorality, expression and joy.
We see knowledge, sharing and learning of forms of art and culture as powerful tools for aggregation, producers of growth and inner and collective harmony.
2) "Quality and Innovation in Youth Work", since all the project partners, through questionnaires administered to their youth workers, future participants in the training course, have found the importance and need for new training activities and educational methodologies.
The need to update oneself in a European context leads to the acquisition of new ideas and energy in youth work. We know that the artistic training activities adopted by them in the realities of our partnership, however valid, will be able to improve by comparing themselves with the trainers and with their peers, thus integrating and expanding the training offer to a wider and more
intercultural range of young beneficiaries.
A training conceived in this way represents the opportunity for a special time, dedicated to act as an incubator for all those projects, ideas and intuitions often necessarily set aside by our participants and project partners and that now, instead, we would like to bring to light and make them grow and develop in all their creativity, away from the daily routine.
3) "Entrepreneurial learning - Entrepreneurship education", a very important aspect, in the medium and long term, within our partnership. Few people in the third sector and in particular in youth work manage to enjoy permanent contracts: most struggle between temporary contracts and project work, which is why it is necessary to acquire knowledge and skills in social entrepreneurship and restructure one's work environment.
Training and updating oneself in an international context allows one to improve one's employment outlook, embracing one's social ethics and, at the same time, reducing the possibility of burnout linked to job insecurity.
Therefore, our objectives are:
1) to enhance the artistic-educational competences of the participating youth workers to allow them to grow personally, professionally and socially;
2) to promote, through dance and the performing arts, the dissemination of healthy values such as beauty, peace, solidarity and the common good expressed in outdoor and street performances in “The May of Monuments”, the art festival of Napoli;
3) to use dance and the performing arts as tools for non-formal education;
4) to facilitate the conception, management and evaluation by participants of new activities aimed at young people;
5) to improve the quality and quantity of youth work in our partnership;
6) to strengthen the visibility and dissemination of our work.

Who can participate
Participants of the training course "Dance & Creativity as Tools for Youth" are trainers, volunteers and youth workers coming from the partner organizations who take care of young people through theatre and other artistic activities for recreational, expressive and educational purposes.
We give priority to participants who are engaged in social inclusion issues, especially with migrants, war asylum seekers and young people with disabilities.
This training course is designed for people who wish to update and upgrade their competences,
working methods and tool-box, especially in an international environment.
There is no age limit, even though we give priority to younger trainers, volunteers and youth workers with financial difficulties or without a permanent job.