On Sunday morning we had the first part of the project presentations of the participants. Julia, Sisilia and Oana showed the results of their very nice project “A suitcase full of memories – A suitcase full of dreams” which they did in Wedding, a neighbourhood in Berlin, together with minor refugee youth. They organised a week long workshop on art and theatre, tried out different methods and managed to make an exhibition and short movies with the youth. They showed the movies during their presentation, which were really funny, and everyone was impressed by what they had reached in such a short time. It was really inspiring to see the impact they had made with their project, how they had connected different stakeholders, artists and the neighbourhood and how they created a safe space for those youngsters while remaining critical on their own position and the way of labeling the youth.
Poster – A Suitcase Full Of Memories
Other presentations were done by Lea on her participation at the Welcome Festival for migrants and Berliners in the summer at Tempelhofer Feld in Berlin (https://www.facebook.com/events/265462833809923/).
Source: Ekvidi Photography
Sameha and Marie showed a short movie of their training at the University of Applied Science in Amsterdam, where they tried out different methods they learned in the first training in Berlin with a group of students that followed the Minor “Promoting human rights in urban areas”. They will continue the training in the new semester, where the methods will be again multiplied.
Astrid showed a presentation of the fourth edition of a multicultural festival she organised in Brasov, Romania. She explained how they created a day with different activities, like cultural exhibitions, traditional music, costumes, dance and poetry.
Furthermore there were presentations of the interviews that some of the new participants did with migrants in their neighbourhood or work as a preparation to the training.
In the afternoon we went into the city on a Postcolonial tour in which we passed several landmarks in Amsterdam that remember to the colonial past and how Amsterdam has actually flourished and became very rich during the Golden Century because of colonialism. The wealth of the city is still coming from that past and is visible in different buildings, like for example the “Tropenmuseum” which was originally established as a colonial museum to show Dutch overseas “possessions” in the 19th century.
After the tour we ended up at the Vereniging Ons Suriname where we had a very impressive workshop on racism by Mitchell Esajas and Jessy de Abreu. For many participants this was a mind-opening workshop in which topics as racism, white privilege, social inequality, racial profiling and micro aggression became very vivid. Here you can find the presentation in PDF:
