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Social dance in period of quarantine

2020-2-SI02-KA105-0156442020Youth mobilityfinalized
Countries: SI|FR|EL|ES · Grant: €8,440
Health and wellbeingOpen and distance learningYouth (Participation, Youth Work, Youth Policy)

Objectives

The aim as well as the goal of the project "Social dance during quarantine" was to enable young people to contact the existing dance community and to maintain the continuity of dance courses or workshops due to quarantine measures during the Covid-19 pandemic. Before the time of isolation, young people regularly attended dance courses, workshops and dance evenings organized by existing associations and informal groups, which have been engaged in swing dancing in Slovenia for many years and imparting this knowledge to the interested public. Not only young participants of dance activities, but also dance teachers, who over the years have invested a lot of effort in building the swing community and their own dance and pedagogical competencies, found themselves without the regular dance activities that they were accustomed to in the time before the isolation. The swing dance scene has been present in Europe since 1980, in Slovenia since 2003, and here in Celje since 2013, and it was threatened during isolation and quarantine regardless of the country. Contact with the public via video platforms and social networks kept the dance scene alive during a very difficult period, when the public meeting places were closed, and thus also the jobs of teachers, youth workers, volunteers, and other individuals, both legal and natural persons, connected to work in a dance milieu. During the isolation, dance workers taught dance skills to young people and at the same time enabled them to socialize through the online programs Zoom, Teams, etc.. This is how we encouraged them to lead an active lifestyle when the outside world stopped and they were left to themselves in closed spaces. Through activities, in our case these are remote dance workshops, we offer young people moral support and keep them in good psychophysical condition. In the project, we dealt with the development of suitable ways of delivering learning dance material at a distance in terms of choosing optimal platforms for video workshops, ways of recording video workshops, identifying and, above all, developing and choosing a suitable method of distance learning or demonstration of concrete dance content/knowledge via video workshops. Spontaneous socializing through group video calls in the context of online courses or workshops is also a very important aspect of distance learning in times of social isolation. Equally important goals of the project were to develop the teaching and professional competences of all involved youth workers/dance teachers; teaching ballroom dancing and leading sports activities remotely, encouraging young people to form a local dance community, raising the quality of youth work within individual participating organizations and countries, and developing young people's social skills. The goals of the mobility of youth workers in the project "Social dance in the period of quarantine" were fully achieved, the result was four author's videos that serve as independent video dance workshops. The several-minute recordings were published on the YouTube video platform, where they can be accessed and used for their needs by youth workers in the role of dance teachers, young trainees, as well as the general public.

Project partners (4)