From 21st to 27th of November the international seminar “(Em) powered by art” has been held in Yerevan (Armenia), hosted by CEIPES Armenia, as third activity of the Work Plan 2019 “Art of our rights”.
“Art of our rights” is a strategic workplan which has involved youth leaders and youth workers from different countries and organisations and had been applied at a local level in their host countries. The main goal was to promote the use of art in youth work while applying human rights education.
Three activities were implemented:
Activity 1 “My Art and Your Rights” – an international training course of young artists was hosted in Palermo, Italy (CEIPES) from the 17th of March until the 23rd. This activity involved 20 young artists from 10 countries – Albania, Germany, Spain, Portugal, Armenia, Turkey, Montenegro, Serbia, Greece and Italy – where there was space to share and apply practices related to their artistic activities, in relation to expressing and transferring human rights.
***Discover more at the this link: Find out how art and human rights melted in our international training course in March!
Activity 2 “(He)Art in Our Lives” – the artists implemented the HRE approach to youth work activities in their local communities by using their new knowledge, and experiences, from the training course. This took place in the months from May to October 2019.
*** Discover more details of this phase in the magazine (click here)
Activity 3 “(Em)powered by art” – in the third and last activity youth workers from the organizations involved in the whole project shared the results from the previous phases and presented the good practices that have been taking place in their NGOs as part of the local HRE artistic activities.
During the first day the group started to know each other through the magic power of arts and sd explored what Armenians think about human rights in their country through an interactive mission impossible in the city.
We spent the morning of the second day with a session about our personal development as youth workers and in the afternoon with the visit to the Museum of Armenian Genocide and the participation to the Yerevan Book Festival, where we could also give our contribution to the Open Microphone moment reading poems in our mother tongue.
It is the third day the group shared the experience of great artists involved in human rights, and in the afternoon Youth Policy Discussion Forum was held with the participation of local youth organizations and other relevant stakeholders, such as Atom Mkhitaryan – head of Federation of Youth Clubs of Armenia (FYCA), Astghik Avetisyan – Head of Armenian PR association , Lusine Mkrtchyan- Psychologist at ” Luys” centre, Lilit Stepanyan – Head of “Today Art Initiative” NGO. Many local youngsters were also involved and contributed to the debate.
In the fourth day we extended our knowledge of different practices related to art and human rights, and we visited two important centres who are developing art through technologies, PicsArt Armenia and Tumo Center for Creative Technologies. We also had the chance to deeper discover the traditions of Armenia participating to Armenian folk dance class.
During the 5th and last day we had the chance to further discuss, based on the meeting and the sharing we had during the previous days, about the potentiality of art as a tool to work on the recognition of human rights, the opportunities and the threats related to its use and the role of youth workers in supporting young people in this field. The rest of the day was dedicated to reflection and evaluation and planning for follow up.
Have a look at the video of the Seminar! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mk0wVPgEsEk
