Arts Empowering Youth Work will be a 18 month project that will promote the use of participatory arts making the youth work more creative. The project aims at making a significant contribution to the quality of youth work by integrating participatory arts working methods with the youth workers' activities, thus to better address their group target's needs, in a more creative way. Through youth work we refer to a structured program of education designed to help the youngsters enhance their social and personal development through voluntary work, both within EU's borders and outside. Objectives: 1. Undertake a systematic research on methodology, staff expertise, end users (e.g. young people) and consortium management, at the end of which we'll have developed a brand new digital book on making youth work more innovative and accessible through participatory arts integration methods. The research will also help us obtain new insight about how to handle our organization's transformational process and pass our seniors' experience and knowledge on to the upcoming generation of youth workers. 2. Train a number of 36 youth workers and artists both from our consortium and from external organizations in order to teach them how to use participatory arts in the work with youngsters coming from various backgrounds. 3. Extend our "Drums for Peace" network of partners by at least two new ones. 36 participants will be directly involved in the project, as trainees, in 2 learning mobilities. They will be youth workers, artists, voluntary workers, youth center staff, all of them beginners and/or willing to learn of working in youth empowerment through arts and non-formal education. At the end of the mobilities they will have learned how to run art-based international youth projects, this through participative and experimental non-formal methods. A rough number of 600 stakeholders (incl. policy makers) will be indirectly impacted by our project's results and dissemination campaign. As activities, there will be two learning mobilities, 3 staff meetings, research on how to use arts as a method in working with vulnerable youth, video coverage needed for producing tutorials on youth work through arts, dissemination meeting/seminar and extended dissemination activities done by partners in their local communities. Methodology used in the project represents a joint work of youth facilitators, artists, research team and video team in order to produce a digital book that will be made available for free to any interested body. During the learning mobilities, 36 trainees will first be taken through the art-based youth exchange process, where they will be taught the basis of this work, while in the second mobility, they will have to put in practice what they learned and facilitate the learning process themselves, but for others. Research and video coverage will reinforce the final product and thus its quality. Results will be: digital book containing DfP research based methodology of participatory arts international youth exchanges, with video tutorials; new competences for 36 youth practitioners; new partners in our network; improved skills for staff; wider perspective on E+ on local communities. The expected impact will be on the participants directly involved as trainees in our learning mobilities, as this will prepare them to better face difficulties in working with vulnerable youth, but also to find better career opportunities. However, their target groups, the ones they work with every day, are our ultimate beneficiaries that our project must bring the biggest impact for. It is about disadvantaged youth, coming from various backgrounds, with social, financial, geographical, or learning difficulties. They are the ones to be positively impacted if we manage to get prepared better youth workers, with better skills and innovative approaches. Also, our digital book should have a large impact too, as it is designed to be interactive and can be accessed from everywhere in the world through Internet. It is also designed to be used especially by youth facilitators in artistic contexts, but also by educators and teachers who want a change in their educational methods. Sustainability: - offering free and unlimited access to our digital book, to anyone - follow up on the research findings - drafting project applications and the final meeting in PT, with the topic of arts in education - incorporating the results in our future project practices - officially recognizing the learning and experience acquired by the trainees in our learning-mobilities - improving the local, national and international youth policies in education through the use of our project's results.
The project aim of our project was to make a significant contribution to the quality of youth work by integrating participatory arts working methods with the youth workers' activities in a creative way specially in international youth exchanges and with young people with different backrounds. The objectives were: 1. A research of arts as a tool in youth work was conducted in the project and videos based on intervieuws about creative methods were produced along with an e-book about the results of the research. The book gives the philosphical basis to the results and identifys concepts to support participative art-based methods and makes the creative process and participative methods as a support for inclusion in youth work visible. 2. We trained 21 youth workers and artists from our partnership organizations and 11 from other organizations to learn how to use participative art based methods in their work in order to create a new generation of facilitators and artists 3. We expected to have also 2 new members in Drums for Peace -network. We succeeded to have one new member The above mentioned 32 trainees were participants in our 2 mobilities. The profile of the participants was in line with our objectives: youth workers, artists, voluntary workers, and youth center staff. Everyone was interrested in using creative art-based and non-formal methods in youth work and as a tool in socio-pedagogic context among yong people with different backrounds. In the trainings in mobilities participants explored the process of a youth exchange and the use of participative art based methods. In the training of the second mobility trainees were able to bring their new skills to practice by working with groups of local youngsters. The research method was participative and active (action reserach ) supported the trainings and the quality of the whole project. All trainees showed new skills learned in the project and were fully able to conduct creative and participative art-based method in international youth work and local community as well. The project made an impact to local youth work specially in the “hands on” part of the training in Orivesi and Juupajoki in finland where it reached approx. 110 local young people, youth workers, voluntary workers and also teachers. 2 mobilities with trainings were rconducted in the project: 1 Cinisello Balsamo, IT, 14-21.2.2019 2 Sammalniemi, FI, 16-23.3.2019 There were 3 project meetings: 1 Kick-off meeting in Copenhagen, DK, 6-8.10.2018 2 Midterm meeting in Sammalniemi, FI, 3-6.8.2019 3 Final meeting in Gaia (Porto), PT, 10-16.11.2019 Results Arts Empwering Youth Work -booklet research based picture of common creative process in a participative art-based workshop. Models that connect people with different backrounds Video intervieuws of experienced artist facilitators sharing their methods and vieuws The trainees learned how to use participative art-based methods and common creative process in youh work among young people with different backrounds and international youth projects The trainees learned to find models used in youth work and projects that connect people and create them by themselves Erasmus+ program, planning and application process was discussed widely and processed in groupwork In the second mobility (C2) trainees were able to see and understand the effect of newly learned skills in the feedback from young people We expect the booklet and videos to make an impact widely and the will be available in the internet. These are specially aimed to facilitators in artistic context but also to educators and teachers who want to develop their methods. The booklet and the printed version will be available for free to anybody We will follow the results of the research in coming projects Planning of new projects and application processes that benefit from AEYW -project has started All participants in the trainings of this project who express their interrest will be allowed to work in their organization and invited as recognized members to the Drums for peace artists community partners of this project will try to make an impact in youth work and youth policy locally, nation wide and international context.