TU Dortmund University students in intercultural exchange: Erasmus+ project brings together young people from 4 countries in Spain

In the project "ViSAS - Virtual Social Art Stage" the first "Blended Mobility" takes place. Young people from Italy, France, Spain and Germany meet and connect in virtual and real activities. The highlight was a 10-day joint stay on the Spanish Atlantic coast in Barbate, where Grimms' Sleeping Beauty was modernized in joint artistic work.

Social art without borders

The Covid19 pandemic intensifies social and economic problems in Europe, making intercultural youth work as important as it is challenging. In the project "ViSAS-Virtual Social Art Stage" from the Erasmus+ program "Youth in Action", therefore a virtual space for digital youth work is being created with the support of Daniel Domscheit-Berg (Verstehbahnhof). This could already be used for get-to-know-you activities during the first meetings of young adults in the project. After almost 2 years of the pandemic, however, the highlight was clearly the real meeting in Barbate, Spain in February: 13 young people from Spain, Italy, France and Germany spent 10 days there together in the artistic winter camp.

Certainly no hibernation

The participants were supervised on site by trainers from the organizations Avanzarte and Projektfabrik in Witten, which as project coordinators also contributed their current focus topic "fairy tales". The focus of the joint work was the forward-looking question: "What if Sleeping Beauty wakes up?", which was answered in artistic working groups in just 10 days in very different performative ways. The impressive result could be admired on 10.02.22 in the atmospheric premises of the Palomar de la Breña, the world's largest dovecote from the 18th century. Since the performance was accompanied by a meeting of the project partners, a transnational audience could be present when Sleeping Beauty, inoculated with injections of feminism, rejected all marriage proposals or, as an exhibit, fled from her museum. The interpretations were very creative and caused much amusement among the audience. The conclusion of the three-part performance was the Spanish group's rendition of the fairy tale "Of a Boy Who Went Forth to Learn Fear " against the nocturnal backdrop of the Palomar.

And further?

The end of the joint stay in Spain is by no means the end of the joint activities. After returning home, weekly artistic challenges will take place in a Messenger group and monthly meetings on the platform, each moderated by a different project partner. A second real meeting will take place in October in Turin, Italy.

Participant observation on stage

The ViSAS project is carried out by the Social Research Center of the TU Dortmund University and is integrated into university teaching as part of the project studies of the B.A. Rehabilitation Education. The project group, supervised by Kerstin Guhlemann, had documentation, evaluation and conception tasks in addition to the artistic work on site. "Exhausting, but nice!" was the conclusion of the students after their return.

More impressions of the time on site are here on Instagram.