""Yes we are in" stands for an trajectory with five theatre groups with adult actors/actresses with intellectual disabilities who want to experiment in the digital world. Culture is a tool for integration and inclusiveness for people who have special needs; ensuring and encouraging access to the arts for people with special needs is beneficial to our societies as it allows us to tap into the creativity of all people, including artists and citizens with special needs themselves. Digital literacy and the skills to work with social media are becoming basic elements in daily life. More than 30% of disabled adults – compared with 11% of non-disabled adults - have never used the internet. Informed by the above, this project's objectives are to showcase innovative practices as well as implement joint initiatives promoting cooperation, peer learning and exchanges of experience at a European level, focusing on the horizontal priority of “social inclusion” and 'innovative practice in digital era', for adult learners with a disability. This project deals with artistic work with groups with intellectual impairment. The project aims to improve their social communication skills, language skills and digital skills. Overall, this will lead to increased self-esteem and more social inclusion. The main objectives the theatre groups will address are: 1. A digital adventure, experiment and learning path 2. A substantive intercultural trajectory 3. An artistic trajectory The digital adventure is the creation of a performance on each of the stages of the five theaters with live stream connectivity with the other four groups. This performance can only succeed if the ambassadors of these theater groups (five from each) form a close-knit team. For this, they meet three times during the 30 months of the project during a five days workshop: talking together about their own environment, about their own culture, about their artistic activities, about their dreams for their own city, ... In this way they process the intercultural process of the project as a group. The artistic directors have to process this intercultural richness of diversity in the live stream performances to be made. Between the three group meetings abroad, the five theater groups will organize bi-monthly livestream evenings where they practice together. The project will be supervised by a large youth organization, specialized in digital tools and training young people in the use of these tools. The artistic supervisors of the partner organizations will receive two multi-day training courses from them. A video documentary on the whole trajectory and objectives, as well as an eBook of guidelines, will be realised, in addition to video montages about the various international meetings. In all those outputs the participant learners with disabilities will express their way of dealing with digital tools, social media and the process of co-creation of a live stream common performance. “Yes we are in” aims to strengthen the self-confidence of people with disabilities by giving them opportunities in the digital world, in intercultural interaction with each other in an artistic way.
"YES WE ARE IN" stands for a trajectory with five theatre groups with adult actors/actresses with intellectual disabilities who want to experiment in the digital world, to make an artistic journey, and to discover intercultural Europe. 1. A digital route Why should people with learning disabilities not be pioneers in the good use of digital opportunities to create something new and exciting together? YES WE ARE IN allowed five theatre groups of people with disabilities, along with their art directors, to experiment with live stream; co-creation of a theatre performance that would be performed/ live-streamed in Belfast, Zagreb, Wolverhampton, Tampere, and Brussels. The project started as planned and during two long-term training sessions in Belgium and Croatia, the actors from the five theatres became one group. In between live stream, rehearsals were a real challenge, not only because of technical expertise but also because for disabled persons the experiment with cameras, and digital work was a real adventure. Unfortunately the final goal, the theatre performance was not reached because of the pandemic. The third training meeting had to be canceled and for many months the actors, belonging to a high-risk group, had to stay home. The digital route the theatre had followed till then, became an advantage in the fight against loneliness; in the efforts to stay in contact with the actors. 2. A substantive intercultural trajectory For four of the five theatre groups YES WE ARE IN was the first European exchange project ever. For many of the actors, the trips to Zagreb and Brussels were even the first trips abroad. The main goal of the international meetings was that they could form a close-knit multi-country group. For this, techniques from socio-cultural work were applied. Besides the digital skills, also language and communication skills of the participants improved. They experienced the richness of the diversity in Europe. The key topic to be explored as a red threat for the theatre performances was ‘how is it for me, as a person with disabilities, to live in my community, city… Do we feel the same, or is it different in your country? Again, the pandemic blocked the development of this topic. Nevertheless, in the difficult months of lockdowns and other measures, the groups locally created several short/longer videos on this topic. Partly by live stream, partly by recording outdoors. Especially, the video of the Tampere group titled ‘my friend called loneliness’ is a best practice of how disabled persons tell about their own situation. 3. An artistic trajectory YES WE ARE IN was an artistic trajectory, with a richness of workshops and online live stream exercises together. But unfortunately, the trajectory didn’t reach the final goal. All actors were looking forward to creating a performance, even more, to co-create this with friends from abroad. Those live-streamed performances would have been the success moment of the project. Nevertheless, all partners recognize that the process was in this case even more important than the result. Even when the delivery moment, the shared performance for the public, for the participants always has been a very important goal to achieve, the many hours of being together in workshops will stay for a long time in their memory. In four documentaries, a booklet with some guidelines and some additional videos everybody can feel the spirit of the project and be withness of the enthusiasm of the participants.