The hereby proposed partnership named PLAY EUROPE aims at opening a theatrical exchange with partners across Europe (France, Germany, Luxembourg, Spain and Poland) who are active players in terms of providing and sharing ground-breaking cultural opportunities within the body of students at university. All partners involved in this project share the view that a strong and active participation to culture-related activities and experiences - in particular those leading to collective creative processes such as theatre, music, dance etc. - is critical during education, even more so during the university years. Meanwhile the actual development at most european universities point in a different direction. Subsidies are cut especially in culture, be it the humanities in general or more specifically those extra-curricular activities referring to students cultural expression. Precisely at a time like this students themselves have to take a stand and manifest their need and desire for cultural education and practical experience in the arts complementary to their respective academic studies. PLAY EUROPE gathers a range of partners that are either student-driven bottom-up initiatives or partners who do provide cultural activities within or for university. To connect those partners will not only mean a great deal of best-practice exchange but also politically strengthen our position towards further cultural abolishment. In the course of our partnership each partner will host and design one transnational activity, all partners will be able not only to learn more about the specific cultures but at the same time explore new approaches and methods about how to inspire and moderate students extra curricular cultural expression. In the scope of our 5 international implementation activities we are going to organize theatre plays, collective work performances, open workshops and debates tied to festivals and other cultural events in place. We confidently aim to involve around 500 active participants and meet an audience of approximately 3000 people throughout this exchange. University students are more and more aware that it has become critical being able to learn, work and live across borders and the European Union offers the perfect framework to do so, therefore transnational european projects are at the heart of any cultural action started by GrAFiTi ASBL be it within the frame of the Greater Region or beyond. The partners involved in this project are an example of a strong will to be part of a transnational bigger picture, sharing and completing each other's’ experience through their cultural diversity and their interdisciplinary skills. "Culture is the process by which a person becomes all that they were created capable of being.” - Thomas Carlyle
At times when Nationalism, Xenophobia and the Hybris of Capitalism try to undermine the humane values of the European Union, students themselves have to take a stand and manifest their need and desire for cultural education and practical experience in the arts. PLAY EUROPE is a project of theatrical exchange with partners across Europe (France, Germany, Luxembourg, Spain and Poland) who are active players in terms of providing and sharing ground-breaking cultural opportunities at university. It‘s by Playing together that we naturally take on our role and responsibility as European citizens, thus promoting the key values of solidarity and mutual respect. Each partner hosted one transnational project meeting and/or one implementation activity, all partners participated in the events, together we exchanged and explored new theatrical approaches and methods and got to know each other’s cultural background. In the scope of three transnational project meetings and four international implementation activities we were able to gather 140 active participants and met an audience of approximately 1.500 people. Together we organized two festivals, staged ten theatre plays, worked on collective work performances and gave workshops about sustainability and environmental issues. Due to the arrival of Covid-19, we had to suspend and later on cancel two of our activities as well as our transnational evaluation meeting, otherwise our project went generally as planned.The canceled activities were replaced by a collectively written book about the importance of ‘Europe’, ‘theatre’ and the experience of the project ‘Play Europe’ that brought us together. Our overall objective was to strengthen our partners’ motivation and confidence in the beauty and importance of their cultural work and inspire them by the diverse approaches that our network provided. By the feedback of our participants we are assured that we reached for what we aimed. Many of them applied several times to take part in our activities, enjoyed the great aesthetic differences they encountered and stated that they were especially surprised about how ‘easy’ the expected language barriers were overcome by their shared passion for theatrical expression.