Academy for Actors of Social Change focusing on ARTIVISM

This year there will be a new focuses, Artivism, which helps the participants to process their feelings, thoughts and experiences related to this. Through the arts – Artivism, it gives them a tool to express themselves and be active, conscious participants in the changes. The program has three main topic as inclusive societies, equality of all genders, environmental protection and art. The main connecting theme is activism, how people can get involved in art and how art can become a tool for social change.

During the two-week program the participants can get to know the world of theater that works in an intimate puppet theater format, which can be performed in especially small spaces, even in living rooms. How to work with artistic tools and help women and young girls who suffer discrimination. How to cooperate with communities and even educational institutions using environmental education theater tools. Besides that, how to initiates intercultural and intersectoral dialogue in society, encouraging the creativity of young people through art education, production of cultural content and improvement of public policies in the field of culture and youth.

With the support of Visegrad Found, there is a special opportunity for participants from 4 countries – the Czech Republic, Poland, Hungary, Slovakia and additionaly from Serbia – to implement their own Artivism pilot programme alongside the Academy participation. We will have an online open day with an Artivism expert, followed by a workshop at the Academy with our V4 partners. From the submitted pilot ideas, we will select the pitch work – 1 from each country – , which will be implemented by the participants after the Academy with the mentoring support of the partner organisations and the finacial support (up to €1000 to each country) by the Visegrad Fund. The project will end with a conference where the idea implementers will present their work.

With our project we aim to tackle the obstacle of involving underprivileged youth in a discourse about their own lives and the topics affecting them, by giving social workers, pedagogues, artists and other professionals working in the field creative and artistic tools to reach and work with them. We intend to reach the result of more open-minded target groups, social workers with innovative and creative skills involved in the programme and beyond, inter-social beneficiaries and the change for a common creative process for interactive performances. Furthermore, we would like to enlarge the Social Art Practices network where individuals are not only acting locally, but across borders.

The project addresses a major problem of ignored and disregarded groups with the training of workers in the social, educational and artistic fields. We aim to educate and work towards an openness of the common mindset and to initiate Europe-wide social activities for the underprivileged.

With our exchange of workers, we support two target groups at the same time: the participants of the exchange and the groups they work with in their own fields. Our project broadens the mind of all involved groups coming from different social and educational backgrounds. The participants experience the differences between different cultures and subcultures and learn from each other.

Our recent OPEN CALL is available HERE

The project is co-financed by the Governments of Czechia, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia through Visegrad Grants from International Visegrad Fund. The mission of the fund is to advance ideas for sustainable regional cooperation in Central Europe.

The project is sponsored by the DANUBE SMALL PROJECT FUND funded by: The Ministry of Science, Research and Arts Baden-Württemberg, the Federal Ministry for European and International Affairs of #Austria, the Arbeitsgemeinschaft (ARGE) Donauländer / State of Lower Austria, the Provincial Government of the Autonomous Province of Vojvodina within the Republic of Serbia, the City of Regensburg, the Danube Office Ulm / Neu-Ulm and the Volksbank Ulm-Biberach.