Distance and hygiene rules have caused serious cuts in youth work across Europe and change both the cultural offerings of the youth cultural institutions and the work with the young people themselves. The switch to work with online media and digital platforms is obvious, but triggers Limits. The particular problem lies in the fact that the existing youth work methods are not designed for the online world. In addition, many young people are not familiar with online tools. There are inhibitions in the application. In addition, online, in front of the screen, the attention of young people is lost even faster than offline and the participation of the young people as well as communication between the participants is more difficult, the effectiveness decreases. The usual youth work methods from the group settings are not working online. Pedagogical and didactic aspects must be brought into focus much more for online-work. Therefore, the consortium wants to develop new methodical-pedagogical approaches for online youth work with a focus on group setting with various cultural branches (comedy, music, art and literature). One focus will be on hybrid (semi-digital) youth work, in which young people stay connected both offline and online and carry out group activities together. For this purpose, existing online tools are first analyzed with a view to their benefits for youth cultural work and an interactive database for the assisted selection of suitable online tools is created with a focus from this. A new set of methods is then developed that fits the tools and takes important pedagogical aspects into account. The methods are then digitally available throughout Europe in a curriculum and manual with explanatory videos. Target groups are specialists from various branches of youth cultural work who want to improve their method repertoire, as well as young people who are directly involved in the practical tests of the methods. With the help of the tools, sustainable online youth work with a good effect in terms of knowledge acquisition, personal development or social skills can be built up. This allows facilities for youth cultural work to resume their work even under corona-related restrictions.
Therefore, the consortium wanted to develop new methodical-pedagogical approaches for online youth work with a focus on group settings with different cultural sectors (comedy, music and literature). One focus should be hybrid (semi-digital) youth work, in which young people remain connected to each other both offline and online and carry out group activities together.
Distance and hygiene rules have caused serious cuts in youth work across Europe and have changed both the cultural offerings of youth cultural institutions and the work with the young people themselves. Switching to working with online media and digital platforms was obvious, but reached its limits. The particular problem was that the existing youth work methods were not designed for the online world. In addition, many young people were unfamiliar with online tools. There were inhibitions in the application. In addition, young people's attention was lost even faster on the screen than offline and the participation of the young people and communication between the participants was more difficult, the effectiveness of the participation decreased. The usual youth work methods from the group settings no longer worked online. Online, pedagogical and didactic aspects must be much more in focus.