Interweaving Danubian Stories

THE INTERNATIONAL YOUTH EXCHANGE:
“Interweaving Danubian Stories”
May 2014
ORSOVA, ROMANIA

Profile of the applicant organization:
Universitur is a non-for-profit organization whose main aim is to narrow the gap between formal and non-formal education, fostering youth participation and awareness.
The projects developed by Universitur mostly focus on creating new methodologies based on tools like participative arts (forum theatre, labyrinth theatre etc.) and media which can be used in order to dynamize interactions, approaches and relationships in a social and cultural environment.

Date: May 2014 - dates to be confirmed

Location: Orsova, MH, Romania

Duration: 9 days of project (7 working days + 2 travel days)

Partnership: 4 EU organizations
- Asociatia Universitur Romania
- Mediátor Egyesület Hungary
- БЪДЕЩЕТО В НАШИТЕ РЪЦЕ Bulgaria
- Izviđačka družba Croatia

Participants: 5 (+ 1 group leader) for every organization

Age: 18-25 (the group leader can be older than 25, up to 30)

Financial conditions: 70% travel cost + 100% food and accommodation covered by the project

Target group:
Young people interested in promoting active citizenship through theater and storytelling. Participants have to be very motivated, interested in the youth exchange’s topics and ready for 7 very intensive and stimulating working days.

Themes:
• Active citizenship
• Cultural diversity and social inclusion
• Inter-generational learning

Aim of the project:
The aim of the project is to support young people in their role as active citizens by increasing their social and cultural awareness through the arts of storytelling and labyrinth theater.

Objectives
• Provide a multicultural environment in which 20 youngsters from four different countries will learn about and use the arts of storytelling and labyrinth theater
• Raise awareness concerning key issues of today’s society (degradation of traditional communities and culture, inter-generational gap, marginalization)
• Promote active citizenship and social inclusion
• Stimulate the dialogue between youth and elderly, in order to implement, reciprocally, the exchange of knowledge from senior to youngster and the other way around
• Strengthen the relations between the four promoters

Subjects of the exchange

Interweaving Danubian Stories is a 7 days long youth exchange (action 1.1 - 9 days counting the arrival and departure day) which will be held in the town of Orsova, on the Danube, and will involve 20 youngsters and 4 group leaders from 4 countries through which the Danube passes.
The participants will share stories and traditions from their places of origin and will discover the local community, with its own stories, traditions and current situation. Based on this, they will build a labyrinth theater performance as the final event of the exchange.


Methodologies
For the entire duration of the exchange, the interactive methodology promoted by non formal education will be used to support the exchange of experience and knowledge (techniques such as ice breakers, team building activities, energizers, role playing games, will be used).
Labyrinth Theater is an interactive, site-specific and context-oriented type of theater. In purely 'technical' terms, the actual performance comes out as an itinerary in which every member of the audience gets involved individually, effectively experiencing various spaces and situations, since the role of the stage is played by a 'non-theatrical' space (both indoors and outdoors) through which the spectators move one by one or in very small groups. Labyrinth theater is collective work, which means that the entire performance is developed by a collective of creators and not by just one individual.
Storytelling is a means for sharing and interpreting experiences. Stories are universal in that they can bridge cultural, linguistic, and age-related divides. Storytelling can be used as a method to teach ethics, values, and cultural norms and differences.