"YOuth workers USing Theatre Augmenting cReativity" (YO.US.T.A.R.) is a two-year Erasmus+ project focused on theatre and performing arts as tools to foster the social inclusion of young people, based on an innovative theatre methods developed in other EU-funded projects by LA GUILLA Theatre and Know&Can. It has 7 partners (mostly theatres and cultural associations) in Italy, Greece, Bulgaria, Sweden, Spain, Serbia and Slovenia. The project involves the creation of a Methodological Framework, a Toolkit and Recommendations for practitioners and youth workers to be able to use the YO.US.T.A.R. method and combine it with other best practices from partnering countries, to ease the social inclusion of disadvantaged youth and empower youth workers with new professional tools. The project is driven by the principle that innovative training spaces form part of broader integration strategies that can actively help tackle issues of exclusion and support social inclusion of youth across the EU. The project moves from a review of theory and practice in the field of theatre as a tool for integration, to facilitating a toolkit that can be deployed by NGOs/theatre working in the field of youth, to an e-booklet with case studies from the partners and a collection of recommendations for practitioners and youth workers to work with theatre for social inclusion across Europe. The project aims at using theatre and performing arts as positive mechanisms to engage, connect and empower young people and to trigger new processes in youth policies implementation. As such, it is firmly in line with the expectations of its commissioning funding body, the EU. YO.US.T.A.R. emerges from two interrelated contexts: 1) previous and current Erasmus+ funded projects and 2) work on theatre, youth and social inclusion done by all partnering organisations. The consortium has a long-term experience in implementing EU-funded projects on theatre, drama therapy, performing arts as tools for tackling social exclusion and support vulnerable target groups: MEDART (theatre and homeless people), RAPPORT (theatre and migrants), RESTORE (theatre and professionalisation of social workers), CC (puppetry and integration of people with disabilities), and of course previous A.N.T.Y.G.O.N.E., A.E.NE.A.S. and YO.US.T.A.R. projects (youth exchanges, training courses, KA2). The project has three overall objectives: 1) to increase the social inclusion of young people through theatre, building on the European values of acceptance of diversity and tolerance, and the promotion of intercultural dialogue as represented by Antigone and Aeneas Greek myths; 2) to give young people a space where they can use theatre to foster self-esteem, self-consciousness and confidence in a new and stimulating environment; 3) to offer staff working with youth in theatres and NGOs a tool (the YO.US.T.A.R. toolkit) which will enable deeper understanding of their clients and will increase their professional skills in the field of art and social inclusion. The YO.US.T.A.R. materials will be free to use for all youth organisations and theatres interested in using them in their daily work with disadvantaged youth. There are seven partners in A.E.NE.A.S. project. All partners are theatre or cultural organisations working closely with youth. The consortium envisages that each organisation will be working on the project pilot workshops themselves and will cascade these workshops out to their networks and youth. There are three outputs in YO.US.T.A.R. project: IO1 is a Literature Review and a Methodological Framework; IO2 is the YO.US.T.A.R. Toolkit with pilot sessions in all partner countries, where young participants will be trained in the YO.US.T.A.R. method for a total of 210 youngsters with fewer opportunities. IO3 is the A.E.NE.A.S. Recommendations for practitioners, where theatre staff and youth workers will find useful tips to work with theatre techniques and youth with fewer opportunities. Activities/Results: ° IO1 – YO.US.T.A.R. Literature Review and Methodological Framework - 10 youth workers involved in the focus groups in each country= 70 participants in total ° IO2 – Design of YO.US.T.A.R. Toolkit and piloting with 30 youngesters from all partners totalling 210 participants ° IO3 – Recommendations for practitioners and compared analysis ° Learning Teaching Training (C1 in Palermo): from each country 3 youth workers (21 youth workers in total) who will participate to the Train-The-Trainers event to directly experience YO.US.T.A.R. methodology ° Multiplier events (E1-E7): each partner will organise a final conference in M24 to disseminate the results of the project with 40 participants per country reaching 280 participants in total.
The consortium, through the project, had three overall objectives: 1) to increase the social inclusion of young people through theatre and creativity, building on the European values of acceptance of diversity and tolerance, and the promotion of intercultural dialogue as represented by Antigone and Aeneas Greek myths; 2) to give young people a space where they could use theatre to foster self-esteem, self-consciousness and confidence in a new and stimulating environment; 3) to offer staff working with youth in theatres and NGOs a tool (YO.US.T.A.R. toolkit) which enabled deeper understanding of their clients and increased their professional skills in the field of art and social inclusion, in particular theatre methods to empower young people at risk of social exclusion and radicalisation.
YO.US.T.A.R. responded to the need of providing new means and skills for facilitators working with youth across Europe to share and embed innovative training practices to enhance youth life. Also, the project wanted to increase young people self-confidence and self-awareness, their social competence and provide concrete chances to enable their inclusion. As Europe is increasingly marked by youth unemployment and post-pandemic changes, youth workers are even more important to tackle youth issues. Due to these socio-economic conditions, young people are now missing a satisfactory perspective for their future life and might be attracted by "nationalistic" tendencies which are giving them a feeling of security and belonging. To deal with these new challenges, it is very important to improve the skills of youth workers and theatre can be the universal language for this purpose, for both practitioners and youth. In the last years the consortium has been supporting youth and youth workers in partner countries thanks to several EU-funded projects already implemented (A.N.T.Y.G.O.N.E. and A.E.NE.A.S. youth exchanges, YO.US.T.A.R. TC), and there is need for more occasion of training, as theatre non-formal methodologies have been successful.