Arts & Craft for Europe

The project takes shape in the need to give an answer to some problems faced by young people of our territory.
Youth unemployment, lack of handcraft skills and the problem of recovering materials to create things, connected to a lack of knowledge of the European Union and its member countries, led Associazione La Stazione to the development of this project proposal.

First of all, we want participants (young people from 18 to 25 years old) to develop and increase their knowledge and consciousness towards the EU and the countries belonging to it also observing the handcraft tradition of each country, then we want them to develop some kind of handcraft capabilities through some labs and the creation of objects.
This kind of approach will let them compare one another on the proposed subjects and share some innovative ideas also through their own creations. Each lab will be carried on through the use of recycled materials, also to give some incentive to the reflexion on conserve and re-use things normally seen as garbage.

Finally, we would like participants, even if they're young, to discuss and develop some kind of new ideas about entrepreneurship: we would like to motivate their entrepreneurial attitude and help them think about how to become entrepreneurs basing on their creativity, their own ideas and initiatives.

In times of crisis it is useful for young people to think about their own skills and possibilities and also try to develop some kind of new entrepreneurship basing on methods which could not be the canonical ones.

During the youth exchange, we will organize workshops to motivate and encourage creativity through the realization of object which will be useful during the exchange. We will also organize a workshop focused on entrepreneurship, where participants will be asked to focus on a product they want to create and sell; they will design it, think about its advertisement and how to sponsor it also using online tools as for example social networks.

Handcraft activities (only with recycled materials):

Bookbinding's workshop: Participant will realize a personal diary where they will write their own impressions and thoughts about each day;
Making of a bulletin board where participants will put their own ideas about cohesion and cooperation among countries;
Making of a dashboard which will be useful to fix any kind of thought or idea;

Team building activities and reflexion groups:

Discussions about European Union and its main objectives;
Each group will present its own country also through handcraft traditions;
Entrepreneurship workshop: each group will design an object to sell, and also find the best way to sponsor and present it;

Please contact us for further information.