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http://divercitysite.weebly.com/

TRAINING MATERIALS ON CULTURAL ETHNICITY AND MIGRATION ITINERARIES

A narrative Report

This output is in many ways the heart of the project, as it builds strongly on the impact of the previous output, and is based on the active collaboration of young people. Indeed, the young people who participated in the initiation workshops can now take a different role, becoming from participant active contributor in a series of joint workshops with the project team. The training material is the result from the joint workshops proposes innovative art based pedagogical activities to tackle the cultural diversity characteristic of our society with two main connected methods: a) through thematic museum itinerariesb) through thematic urban walks.You will find below the experiences of the 3 partners (Austrian, French and Hungarian’) , good reading!

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"The European Commission support for the production of this publication does not constitute an endorsement of the contents which reflects the views only of the authors, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein."

Contenu

Vienna-STAND129....................................................Général description............................................................4Objectives..........................................................................5Experience/s during the workshop most appreciated............5Difficulties found in the development. How to solve them in future Workshops...........................................................................6How does the Workshop add a new way of thinking the city? Innovative aspects..............................................................9

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Does our Workshops accomplish the indicators we managed in the first part of the Project? (see good practices and foundation Bricks).........................................................................9Why do you think your Workshop adds diversity to the city? Diversity aspects..........................................................................10Open Concepts that the Workshop has oponed and can be applied onwards, in future Workshops on the city.................10

Escale à Franconville Paris – Elan InterculturelGénéral description..........................................................11Objectives........................................................................16Experience/s during the workshop most appreciated..........16Difficulties found in the development. How to solve them in future Workshops.........................................................................17How does the Workshop add a new way of thinking the city? Innovative aspects............................................................18Does our Workshops accomplish the indicators we managed in the first part of the Project? (see good practices and foundation Bricks).......................................................................19

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Why do you think your Workshop adds diversity to the city? Diversity aspects..........................................................................19Open Concepts that the Workshop has oponed and can be applied onwards, in future Workshops on the city.................19

Hidden Heroes in the 8th districtGénéral description..........................................................20Objectives........................................................................22Experience/s during the workshop most appreciated..........23Difficulties found in the development. How to solve them in future Workshops.........................................................................24How does the Workshop add a new way of thinking the city? Innovative aspects............................................................24Does our Workshops accomplish the indicators we managed in the first part of the Project? (see good practices and foundation Bricks).......................................................................25Why do you think your Workshop adds diversity to the city? Diversity aspects..........................................................................26Open Concepts that the Workshop has oponed and can be applied onwards, in future Workshops on the city.................26

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Favorite Places Vienna – STAND129

General description

Right after finishing the workshop series in the museum (mumok – Museum moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien) and with an art mediator (IO3), we started the sessions in Favoriten, Vienna’s 10th district, with the same group of young adults we had worked before (IO 4). The cooperation between Spacelab, Mumok and Stand 129 went on, although now the focus was much more on the youngster’s environment and therefore, the 10th district of Vienna.”Favoriten” is a district on the outskirts of Vienna with little cultural or art spaces. It is not – as the name would suggest – one of the most favourite districts of Viennese people, it rather has to fight against its bad reputation. The title of the project was supposed to reframe this prejudice.The frame of our workshop was diversity with a focus on migration, ethnicity and multi-culturality, whereas the topic focused on identities, feelings and the city to explore this field.The workshops took place from 10. September 2015 to 13. Oktober 2015, each week six to 12 hours, in Spacelab (an offer for adolescents and young adults who have anextended demand for support and assistance in planning their educational and vocational future), Stand 129 and 10th district of Vienna, as well as at MUMOK (Museum of Modern Arts) for project closure.

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The project was realized with 12-14 youngsters in the age of 16 to 25 years old. The participants are from a mixed group of girls and boys, who dropped out of school or are unemployed. They are currently in a program that helps the youths to find a way back to the education system or find a job.

Objectives

In this part of our project we focused a lot on the participants themselves. One of our main objectives was to raise the awareness of the importance of communication and encourage the participants in the process of building relations with themselves, each other and with the community.In concrete terms, at the beginning of IO4 we evaluated IO3 with the participants, using the target method (see evaluation methods IO3) as well as evaluation through Sound & Movement and informal talks. In the first session, we cooperated again with the art mediator, who this time came to the participant’s place (Spacelab). Our objectives were raising the awareness of identities: to create an open platform in which the youngsters would be able to talk about their feelings, own wills and wishes. A further aim was to learn and use concrete tools of participatory video making, sound and visual storytelling and finally to make a video about identities and feelings in the city and the area they live in from their perspective.

Experience/s during the workshop most appreciated

During the Silent Staging* exercise, the participants first asked about the meaning of the task and why they should do it. The art mediator explained that they could see it as a game and should just listen to the rules and follow them. We talked about the experiences afterwards and participants stated that they liked the interaction and the story that developed. Even though some of them were still not sure about the “higher meaning” (as they said) they respected the rules, did not talk throughout the whole exercise and seemingly enjoyed themselves as some actions where commented by laughter or grumbling. They learned that sometimes there is no need to understand the higher meaning of a task to do it well and they

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Later, the participants had a very short time to think and realize a video clip in the city. They had only their body maps (which they realized during one workshop session) and masks and cameras and in three different groups they made all in all 10 videos. They were all totally different to each other. We realized that this time, with the objects that they created by themselves, they were more concentrated while filming outside. They were proud of situating the body maps in the public space and seeing the material (video, film) they had done.The videos and photos that were shot in the afternoon once again showed the creativity of the participants.

Description of the tasks:

* Silent staging: The art mediator marked a space in the room with a white line and provided ten objects. One after another, the participants could either 1) place one of the objects in the space 2) move one of the objects inside of the space, or 3) take one out of the space. Every participant could just do one movement at a time. Without speaking a story was developed and participants reacted to the actions that were done before.In a second step we enlarged the space and could use everyone in the room, together with the objects. With the same rules, participants therefore could also stage their peers, place them in the space, move them around or take them out of the space. Silently, the space was negotiated as well as they could experiment with how far they felt comfortable putting others in a position; if, when, and by whom those places in the space were released again by someone who took them out of the space again etc.

Staging in public space: In the afternoon, the participants were sent out to different places in the neighbourhood with their body maps, masks, and some of the objects (each group was given one of the objects we had used in the first exercise). They were told to stage them, similar to the exercises in the morning, but in public space. They were given cameras to record their actions (both video and photos). The settings were: the park, a parking lot in front of a hardware store and a bus station. The different settings lead to interesting interpretations and different outcomes.

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Another very important and exciting part of the project was the main shooting day. In two groups, we went outside to the city to film. One group was responsible for the interviews. The other was responsible for the filming of/ and within the public space with their masks and to collect material that transports emotions.Comparing with the “planning part”, filming was much easier, as we were able to go out to the public space, move around and play with the environment. Being in public space while filming is always a challenge for youths and usually they develop great energies while doing it. One group decided to interview people from the district and ask them “if they are happy in Vienna”. The youngsters were quite brave and open to interview strangers on the street. The other group who decided to film themselves with the masks to collect additional material for the video was also very brave. They enjoyed to be in front of the camera with a different role at the places which they currently use without noticing in their daily lives (as a bus stop or a pedestrian underpass). The masks gave them the freedom to move like another person on the street, close to strangers. They enjoyed it so much that even some of the participants who didn`t want to be in front of the camera at first, had forgotten about it and walked in front of the camera, between the crowd to be filmed.We were more than 3 hours walking and filming in the public space. For the first time, they worked so hard and without playing with their cell phones that they even forgot the time (and the lunch break!) . Also, they were talking with us in a very open way about themselves, their experiences even in private, which shows the trust they had gained throughout the project. It showed us for the first time that we were not only the “workshop trainers” but also friends to them.

Difficulties found in the development. How to solve them in future Workshops.

One of the hardest parts of the project was the planning of the common video production. Even if we had two small groups it was hard to get a common decision about the videos in each group. The youngsters had completely different ideas for a video or they were just quiet and didn’t contribute to the discussion. We didn`t want

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to interfere to much in their planning process. So we tried to help them with asking different questions. Language was also a big issue, as many of the youngsters do not speak German as a first language or generally find it hard to talk about abstract concepts and visualize ideas to get a concrete plan. After nearly 2 hours nevertheless, both groups knew what they wanted to do. They both had their stories and storyboards in the hand. Even if we tried to loosen up the conceptual part by methods such as speed dating, it was still hard work and many of the youths did not want to share their stories at first.In preparation of this part, we already knew that this conceptual phase would be hard, so we prepared different activities:

1- Speed dating: We wanted to learn about extra ordinary experiences of the participants within the city. So we prepared some questions to ask each other in 3 minutes. After the speed dating rounds, each of the youths was invited to tell the stories that s/he remembered or that most resonated with their own personal experience to the group. Through that process, we collected common issues and clustered them, talking more deeply about the experiences and issues to have a basic concept for the video content.

2- Fixing the concept for the videos and preparing a Storyboard: We came together with the participants and made brainstorming in two groups, about how we can bring all these experiences, and all the topics we have been dealing with until that day, together in a short film. We sorted out which kind of a film they would like to make, how and where. They were divided in two groups to prepare 2 different storyboards and planned everything necessary to shoot a video. At the end of the session, both groups came together and presented their respective concept and storyboards to the others. In the end we discussed together how each of them could be improved.

Even if it was meant to be fun and energetic, surprisingly the participants were very shy during the speed dating and some of them seemed not to feel comfortable at all. Even if they had have many ideas for their video during the whole time we had spent together, when it came to the planning, they couldn’t find a common ground. Some of these issues were because of language difficulties and because of the shyness of some of the participants to talk in the group, explain and defend their ideas.

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But in the end, both groups decided on a topic and a way to go. It was very nice to see that the questions they wanted to ask were the same questions which we had asked ourselves at the beginning of this project (still in the conception of the workshops for IO3) when we defined the aims of this whole project. We never talked about these questions openly with the participants, but kept them in mind during all of our activities. It was very nice to see, that in the end of the project nearly all of them were in the head of the youngsters. So even if it was a hard task to prepare the storyboards it was quite a big pleasure to observe this process.

In future workshops, other ways of leading the young adults to conceptualize their film can be tried out. Maybe involve the topic already in the beginning or collect topics and questions that pop up during other activities and introduce them again during that stage, so that the participants have something to begin with. Especially for this target group, conceptual work is very hard and needs a lot of patience and guidance. It is important not to make this section too boring and dry for them and keep the group energized.

How does the Workshop add a new way of thinking the city? Innovative aspects.

Participatory Video is a method that facilitates a group in the production of their own video. It is important to let the decisions be made by the group and to make sure that the video represents the view of the participants towards a certain topic. By introducing video in these workshops, we made sure that the young adults kept an interest in our topic and worked on it in their own way. Video is always a good magnet to attract people and, also very importantly, share the outcome with a broader community. Viewing the environment through a camera lens always means getting new perspectives and getting new viewpoints. Our workshops concentrated very much on the participants themselves, on their identity, their perspective of themselves and their environment, their wishes and feelings. With a lot of body work, the participants got to engage with themselves. With methods like creatively conceptualizing their dream city we explored common grounds and concepts that stand behind the term “city”, always thinking city not as a fixed entity but a space that is created through the people who use it.

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Does our Workshops accomplish the indicators we managed in the first part of the Project? (see good practices and foundation Bricks)

Yes. Mainly the following:

Diversity as main topic of the project Themes: cultural diversity, locality Target Group: Youth in deprived areas Inclusion of target group in process Institution extends its space by the public space (e.g. mumok art mediator

coming to spacelab to do a workshop there, working in public space etc.) Valorization of city outskirts (Building bridges between disadvantaged / silenced groups and majority

society)

Why do you think your Workshop adds diversity to the city? Diversity aspects.

During our workshops we did a lot of interventions in the city, such as placing the participant's “body maps” in the public space, shooting in public transport, bringing the canvas-graffitis they had done in IO3 to the public space as “pop-up graffiti” and document it with photos, shooting video in non-spaces (such as under crossings, subways etc.) where people are usually not aware of the place they move in, interviewing people on the subject of diversity in the city etc. Maybe we did not add diversity to the city, but we certainly showed it. In the end, diversity in the city already exists. It was our aim to make the participants aware of this fact and to visualize it in a positive way out of their own perspective.

- Open Concepts that the Workshop has oponed and can be applied onwards, in future Workshops on the city.

Participatory video combined with art mediation, body work, and improvisation

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For more information see also Itineraries Description sheet.

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Escale à FranconvilleParis – Elan Interculturel

General description

After spending 3 full days in the museum, the Paris DiverCity team was ready to move to Franconville (Paris suburbs) to start the work on the itinerary of the participant’s neighborhood. Our workshop took place from 24th to 30th of July 2015. The 3 days spent in the Pompidou Museum (IO3) were a success in many ways, what we felt the following days (IO4) we should aim at a stronger and more active, full involvement of participants. As in the Pompidou Center the participants were active, but clearly “receivers” of the activities proposed we were ready to start a new collaborative phase. Later it seemed necessary to introduce the following days activities creating a stronger emotional, physical and cognitive involvement. A series of group-building tasks were then proposed, which were meant to serve also as inspiration for the creation of the interactive itinerary. To ensure a good working atmosphere we took every day for icebreaking games and warm-up activities which allowed us to introduce the subject of the day and helped us to unblock the imagination. These activities have their origin for example in the theatre of the oppressed / storytelling / films / plastic arts. In the following we list some of them which are easy to reproduce

Activity 1: Weesh, Splash, BoingAIM: Be attentive, awake and quick!Participants stand in a circle and play with an imaginary ball. The ball can go to the right (impulse by the right hand) or to the left (impulse by the left hand). The ball can be blocked and the person has to react quickly on the blockage. The ball can be send to any participant (across, in front etc…) with a new gesture.

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Activity 2: “Walk, stop, name, clap..”AIM: DemechanisationThis exercise comes from the Theatre of oppressed by Boal. The participants walk in the room occupying all the empty spaces. The facilitator start with 2 very simple instructions “when I say clap you clap, when I say Name you shout your name”. They continue to walk and follow the instructions until the trainer adds a new rule “when I say Clap you say your name and when I say name you Clap”. 2 minutes later we add the instruction “When I say Stop you Stop and when I say Walk you Walk” (the previous instructions remains the same). Then ask the participants to do the opposite and add a third pair of instruction that you will also ask to inverse. Activity 3: “Sound jungle”It is a work in pairs while every team chooses a sound easily to identify. One team member closes its eyes and has to follow the partners sound.

Activity 4: “Empty chair”Everybody has to put his chair in some random place of the room but not in a circle. Everybody will have a seat but there is one empty chair for the facilitator who has to stand. The Facilator’s role is to try to sit down on his chair while the others have to block him. He or she is only allowed to move in slow motion The only way of blocking him or she is presented by someone’s sit down on the empty chair. But in that case another empty chair will be added. So the task is to keep the facilitator standing as long as possible.••Not allowed to sit back to your chair if you were about to leave it. Once you start standing up, you have to keep on moving and look for another chair.••The game ends if somebody breaks a rule or the facilitator sits down.

We worked together on the modules by organizing different activities. The first one, just described up here, was the introduction to Franconville’s itinerary. To be sure that our participants (who didn’t speak a lot of French) got the sense of what an itinerary is, we decided to work on it a little bit more by the “concept of itinerary in the city”: The special guiding method the volunteer team of Centre Pompidou uses, is called "derive". This means that volunteers accompany small groups of youngsters and

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choose art works based on what they find interesting or appealing. This “walking around” does not have a privileged starting and ending point, it is a non-directive waking together and chatting about art works in the interest of the participants. For the sake of the workshop however, they also did a second walk, in which four art works were chosen for their potential to trigger discussions around our theme of diversity. We used these two experiences of the participants to talk about an “itinerary” in the city. One of the participants asked “why would people from Paris be interested in coming to Franconville, what is here that people could be interested in?”. We took this question to talk about the key objective of the Divercity project and of conceptions of what is “valuable” and what is not.

This was the first time that our group worked with non-formal learning pedagogy and we felt that the group needed to know more about it, about how we could learn through the construction of an itinerary about diversity and ourselves. This is then what we proposed to the group:

1st step: we gave each participant two post it papers and invite them to write on each of them something they are very happy to have learnt during their life. We then invited them to place the post-it under “school” or “outside of school” depending on whether this learning took place in the school or outside. The debriefing aims to show that not all important things are learned in school, in fact as many important things are learned outside of school.

2nd step: we wrote on different post-it's the activities done during the day. We went around and each participant says which activity they appreciated the most during the day.

3rd step: for each activity we tried to identify what we could learnt (what competences we developed) during this activity. The things we learnt we wrote on a different color post-it and after we put the different activities in groups around them. For instance: we identify “collaboration” as something we developed through some activities: e.g. the empty chair, communication through: Sounds jungle.

Now we were ready and on track to attack the next module: Composing with bodies, sounds, objects. This second more “hands on” day focused on playing and

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discovering the diverse ways of using our bodies. We wanted to show our participants how creative they could be following the idea that every one of us is an artist in his or her own way. A few examples of activities: With very simple materials (newspapers, scissors, glue, wire) we created art pieces, then an exhibition and finally and itinerary through the exhibition using storytelling. We also invited our participants to pair up and with one of them blinded and the other one as a guide they had to share / create a journey only using movement and sound.

To introduce our next module “Diversity and art” we really went back to the basic as our participants didn’t really have an idea to define Diversity clearly. We start the session by explaining “diversity”, “migration” and the connection between the two. Previously we have placed on the wall different reproductions of art works (paintings, photographs and photos of installations and performances). After defining together the concept of diversity we asked participants to choose the art work that best makes them think about “diversity”. Each participant then was asked to explain his or her choice. This was an occasion for us to talk about aspects such as: changes the individuals undergo to “resemble” the majority, what it would feel like if there was no diversity etc. For each image, we also asked whether it can be considered art work. We also put a name on different art forms: photography, painting, installations, performance…To go to the heart of the project we proposed to the group a “Brainstorming on diversity”: Two groups were created; both are given a flipchart paper and are invited to write / draw as many ideas connected to “diversity” as they can. After 20 minutes we looked at what we had collected (manifestations of diversity: physical appearance, dresses, hair styles, language, writing, eating, religions, cult places, habitats etc..).In a second step we identified all the elements on our flipchart which are “cultural” (as opposed to “natural”). We find that the only element that is not entirely cultural is “physical appearance” but it is also tainted by culture. In a third step we identified of these which are the elements that could be seen in the city. We assigned the homework of finding such elements in Franconville. The following modules had the objective to look for connections with themselves and then for connections with their city. For the first one we proposed the activity named “Real path dreamt path”:

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This activity developed by Werner Moron and Paracommand’arts (Belgium) invites participants to answer the same question first in the most objective least artistic way possible, then a second time by introducing some change, giving a dreamt or imaginary answer. Two questions were proposed: a) an oldest and most detailed memory or b) an average day.To overcome language difficulties we invited participants to give their answers through a collage instead of verbal answer. Once the “real” collages were created we invited everyone to introduce a change and give the “dreamt” or “imaginary” answer, to make that day / memory an ideal day / memory. Once done, we asked everyone to find a word that connects the two drawings / answers. We wrote down the words to use later on.

While looking for connection with the city we proposed to think the city as art work. During the last day of the “escale à Pompidou” (IO3 workshop) participants were invited to make a self-portrait with an art work they particularly liked or felt connected to. In the current activity we invited everyone to try to remake the picture now replacing the art work with a backdrop in the city. The point was to look at the surroundings with a new look: just considering shapes, lines, colors, ambiances, rather than the usual significance or “use” of that specific corner of the city. We then looked at the pictures together.

At the end of the day we recapitulated the concept of itineraries which we would tackle the next day in our last module “Creating Itineraries”: The next day started with some warm up exercises then we revisited the idea of the itineraries.

The results of the activity “real path imaginary path” led in a certain number of key words, from which we chose six words (“calm”, “floating city”, “life”, “laughing” “watching”, “tower”)which would become the “stations” of our itineraries.

The „Stations” were the destinations which connected itinernary. In each station we foresaw to perform some activity, which would engage visitors. For each station we named a “director” and an “assistant” who would be responsible for identifying the concrete place of the station as well as the activity to do. Once the roles were distributed we went on a walk together to visit potential spaces identified by

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participants. We also proposed some new spaces during the walk. At each potential spot we stopped and following on the level of development of the idea we either brainstormed together either tried out a concept / activity that the directors / assistants had in mind. After the trial of each activity we asked the group whether they felt that the activity reflected the title of the station, and how it could be improved. We then asked the directors / assistants to keep on reflecting on what would happen and how.

Objectives

The frame of our workshop was diversity with a focus on migration, ethnicity and multi-culturalism. We wanted to give value to periphery areas of Paris by introducing an urban walk inspired on our learnings from the Pompidou Center.

We prepared our participants to create their own itineraries by using their imagination, local knowledge, critical sense and creativity. Through active collaboration the young people who participated in the initiation workshops are now encouraged to take a different role from participant to active contributor in a series of joint workshops with the project team.

At this stage of the project we also aimed to improve the self-perception, self-esteem and self-awareness of the participants and the interaction with their surroundings. Taking into account the local context helped them to reflect on the concept of diversity and the impact of diversity on our own experience in France. For our participants but also for the local community we wanted to help appreciating aspects of their surrounding that used to be undervalued.

Experience/s during the workshop most appreciated

We really enjoyed going through the process with the group, creating together a very good final product that we were all proud to show in our public event. Between the workshop and the open day we had one month summer break. We were happily

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surprised to find that our entire group came back to show to the others what we have been working on. We had a rehearsal of the itinerary the day before welcoming the audience and the group had very good ideas on how this day was going to happen. They decided to make a circular itinerary where the visitors would be spread into groups of 6/7 people going together through the circuit. Each participant’s team lead one station of the itinerary and welcomed the visitors and made them travel together in their invented united and divers universe.

Difficulties found in the development. How to solve them in future Workshops.

The biggest difficulty for us was to work with a group of young adults while half of them didn’t speak the language and had just arrived to France. This same difficulty was at the same time the most exiting experience of the project for us: Co-constructing an itinerary with newly arrived was a challenge as at the same time that we were creating the urban walk. We were creating the link between the participants and their new environment. This was a very interesting joint task but hard to keep on with the rhythm of the project. As we mentioned before we adapted the program planned to our participants needs and took more time during the workshop to make sure that they could follow and understand what seemed to be very abstract concepts for them: Diversity / Itinerary / Urban Walk.

How does the Workshop add a new way of thinking about the city? Innovative aspects.

Looking for entry points in a new environment : points of contact to which youngsters can connect with they are, what they like what is important for them, where they feel at ease. Looking for spaces on the city where we belong to and how to connect it with others.

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Appropriating a spaces/people in the city to transform it and make it a pretext for telling stories, to gather people around and also to learn from each other experiences.

Does our Workshops accomplish the indicators we managed in the first part of the Project? (see good practices and foundation Bricks)

If we go back to the revision of concepts and indicators towards a possible methodology for art and Diversity in Museums and in the City that we developed on the first part of the project we can see how our workshop responds to the frame that the partnership created for this project:

Criteria of belonging: THE IMPORTANCE OF “WE” => as we were describing above creating a link between the participant and their neighborhood, through this link also connect them, connect the periphery area with the city of Paris, connecting migrant with local.

Typical activities: What do we do? DOING TOGETHER => Going through the workshop together as a group, defining what we want to create together.

General objectives: What do we want? Why do we do it? TRANSFORMATIVE VISION => On the proposed process of creating an urban walk together we transform a simple park into our own place and universe where we shared each other’s vision and invited the rest of the community to do the same thing.

Norms and values: What is good or bad for us? NETWORKING => by Connecting Franconville with Pompidou Center we created not only a very nice group of friends but also 4 of our participants jointed the permanent team of Art Session as new young volunteers of the museum. This shows that they discovered a new place for them.

Position: What are our relationships with each other? HORIZONTALITY => Even if the workshop was organized by Elan’s staff we were there to guide and help the participants creating their own itinerary. We tried to avoid

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hierarchy and be as horizontal as possible re-stablishing the power in the group.

(Building bridges between disadvantaged / silenced groups and majority society)

Why do you think your Workshop adds diversity to the city? Diversity aspects.

Working in a district characterized by cultural diversity, the youngsters chose a park which they transformed by different activities and proposals for telling stories about migration and diversity through different senses.

Open Concepts that the Workshop has oponed and can be applied onwards, in future Workshops on the city.

Plurisensoral itineraries urban walk

For more information see also Itineraries Description sheet!

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Hidden Heroes in the 8th district

General descriptionWe choose a part from the 8th district of Budapest to realise the creation of itineraries, that is the most multicultural, one part of it has more respect and the other half is more a “no go zone” for the majority, and our office is located also in the district. Due to the heterogeneity of the group regarding the location in Budapest (they are not a local community, like inhabitants of one specific neighborhood) we believed that this space could fit the best to this process with the participants, where they can easily connect to the ambient, as the district offers a great diversity of cultural traces (halal butcher shops, different Asian and African restaurants and shops, hairsaloons, etc.)

Due to other work processes and also based on the feedbacks of the participants (occupations, weather, etc.) we postponed the itinerary workshops in the city to the spring time (April – May 2016). The composition of the group partly was the same as the group which participated at the workshop in the museum, and due to personal reasons (some moved from Budapest, some of them got a job, etc.) we also had new members, both migrants and local Hungarians.

The methodology we planned was based on non-formal learning, drama exercises, storytelling, mapping and anthropological technics (making interviews in smaller

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groups and pairs). Involving an urban anthropologist (who is also expert in city walks) and a city walk guide we wanted to assure the complex learning environment and diverse experience of the group.

We planned the activities for two weekends (giving more options for the group at the recruitment phase, they chose this option as it fitted the best to their schedule) on the 9th-10th April and on 30th April-1st May. The 10-12 participants were from Egypt, Mexico, Ukraine, Iran and Hungary, age between cca. 22 and 40.

The first two days we dedicated to gain experiences and impacts from the city space in diverse manners. The group building activities were already combined with mapping the city in groups (drawing collectively mental map of the city, marking the paths the participants usually take in the city space) and visualizing the weekdays and weekend routines. After that the group did observation practices in the room, than in small groups and in pairs collected impressions in the surroundings while walking: one member of the group had to focus on sounds, the other one on visual signs, and the last one on movements (see later in more details). The next day they made interviews with locals in pairs so that those could also participate who couldn’t speak Hungarian (see later in more details). The results of the observations and researches were always presented in a performative way, with video, collages, small scenes, in statues, etc. By the end of the first weekend the workshop of the anthropologist expert summed up the two days with a very interactive activity, when the participants chose a location that was important or influencing for them during the two days, they told their vision or stories, meanwhile the others were listening and at the end everyone wrote down a keyword to a post-it (after every story), so by the end of the round of the stories we had a “cloud” of associations. To finish up, the participants constructed a mental map in the room from their chosen locations, where everyone indicated the location where his story happened and discussed how the story could be told to an audience. Our aim was to facilitate to turn their experiences into narratives that can be (but not necessarily should be) the core of the itineraries, city walks, and also to start to think about possible connections between the points or narratives, and forms of the presentation.

The third workshop day we participated at a city walk in the topic of the Holocaust, after that the expert held a Q&A for the participants who could ask theoretical and technical questions and add comments. The aim was to get inspired and observe the strength and weaknesses (if any) of a walk, so that we could make points to consider

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in our walk. After this we finished one “sensorial collection” part with an activity in pairs where one person was blindfolded and the other composed a tactical and sonorial adventure – using the walls of the houses, the fountain nearby, the other pair’s presence they made a travel in the space giving different impacts to the one who was blindfolded. We asked them to avoid verbal communication, so that they can both concentrate to the “travel”. All of the group really enjoyed this part.

In the afternoon, based on this first phase the participants started to create the itineraries in two groups, planning the overall framework, the stops, the timing and the roles. By the second day we had two draft scripts, we tried to merge them but finally the participants felt that the two plans work individually better. So we had by the end an itinerary 1 called “Hidden heroes of the 8th District” and itinerary 2 called “You can find a place that feels like home – everywhere in the world!” We closed up the workshop by planning the realization and evaluating the whole 4 day-long process. The participants were critical but satisfied, we had time for a very detailed evaluation, where they could express their struggles and joys, that gave us an opportunity to understand more the dynamics of the process and reflect on the steps we planned.

Objectives Our aim was to build the continuation between the workshops in the museum and the recent process, to ensure a framework for the participants to discover together the city and what the space can offer as learning place. We planned activities to observe diverse aspects (voices, movements, visual elements, etc.) and present them in smaller groups, to find links, patterns and open their senses to the city. We also wanted to link the participants to the locals, proposing an interview activity to get to know what the people of the district are interested in, what are the common issues, etc. (we even had in mind the option to involve locals to the walk as supporters, but as the itinerary was based entirely on the ideas and concepts of the participants, finally they did not approach local places to involve them actively). And the third objective was to create a bridge between the participants and the space, to overcome the distance of observation and get closer on a personal level. We planned to build up the itinerary from these three components, focusing on cultural diversity in a broad sense (cultural and social).

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Experience/s during the workshop you appreciate the best/most.

The trainers felt that the activities that linked the participants to the city space and to the community on a more personal level had the most success. They referred to these activities at the final evaluation of the whole process.

Feels like home: the participants were divided in small groups, where everyone had a different focus to observe (sounds, movements, signs). They walked together without speaking, but the groups stayed together, sharing the same path in the district. Besides focusing on their field, everyone had the task to find a place, where s/he feels like home. When the spot was located, the member was asked to take a selfie (or ask the companions to take a picture) at the spot. Next day we printed the photos, hang at the training space and asked the members to think about their feelings and memories, and contract a story and tell to the group “as a guide would tell”, telling their connections to the spot they shared memories, traditions of their home countries, aspects of feeling included in a community or by a city. They really appreciated each other’s stories, asking questions and adding comments.

Interviews with locals: at the second day the group collected topics that they considered important in the whole city of Budapest and issues that especially are related to the 8th district. We discussed the basic rules of doing an interview in an ethical and objective way (asking permission for recording the interview, ask open questions, etc.), after this the paired up and chose an area in the district to approach locals there. They had an hour to do interviews, ask the locals the questions they were interested in. After returning to the office we asked the pairs to find an other pair to work with (randomly), share the resume of the interviews and create a performative presentation of the summaries to show the others characteristic, atmosphere, transmit the information in a concentrated way.

The participants appreciated a lot the opportunity to get in contact with locals, especially the migrants who don’t really speak Hungarian. It seemed that they do not often have the opportunity to communicate with people who are not connected

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to their working environment or are not close friends. One of the groups made an interview with a man who is a street cleaner. The man was a local patriot in the district, had a wide network and was very happy about his life. The encounter had a great impact, the participants mentioned it even afterwards.

Difficulties found in the development. How to solve them in future Workshops.

By the end of the process we realized that most of the difficulties came from the fact that the participants didn’t feel familiar in the surroundings we worked, even if they spent a certain amount of time with discovering the neighborhood, even if we narrowed down the district for a part that includes diverse communities and cultural traces. After the workshop in the Museum we saw that they come from different areas of the city which are too distant to join in the frames of a common walk. When we will do this workshop next time, we will try to recruit the participants from the same neighborhood, same living area, maybe involving local community development organizations or other institutions that organize people on a geographical base.

We also observed that our participants simply did not believe that their personal impressions and stories are interesting enough for the public, although at the discussion when we analyzed together the city walk the group participated together in, they marked as one of the strongest point the moment when the guide made a personal comment and told a family story connected to the topic of the walk. At the end both of the working groups involved somehow the personal narratives into the itinerary, nevertheless next time we would surely focus more on the empowerment of the participants and on the valorization of the subjective experiences and details.

What does your Workshop add to a new way of thinking the city? Innovative aspects

Usually the city walks concentrate on one topic (historical or thematic) that is more objective and information based. Our aim was to create a safe and in the same time open space, where the participants can change perspective and look at the district how they never looked, to create a set of subjective experiences and reflect on

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them, so that they can use the tools we used to create more personal and subjective itineraries.

Our workshop concentrated very much on the perspective of the group and the participants, how they perceive the space, how they can personally connect by senses and impressions (walking in silence and observe, guiding each other blindfolded in the space, etc.). They were asked to find a place where they “feel at home”, take a picture and afterwards tell why they choose the spot.

In parallel we proposed to open for the local community by observations and making interviews with locals based on topics that the participants considered important in the city and in the district itself. This way they had the opportunity to merge more in the local perspective, collect information and confront them with their previous vision of the district and its inhabitants.

We believe that the integration of the non-verbal discoveries in the city and the strongly performative actions to the reflection of the results are the innovative aspects of our process with the group.

Does our Workshops accomplish the indicators we managed in the first part of the Project? (see good practices and foundation bricks)

We accomplished the following indicators:

Diversity as main topic of the project

Themes: cultural diversity, locality

Inclusion of target group in process – the trainer staff tailor made the schedule for the group based on the reflections and comments of each day,

Valorization of city outskirts – the 8th district is the most stigmatized zone of Budapest

Building bridges between disadvantaged / silenced groups and majority society – as the migrants/refugee’s situation in Hungary is quite complicated, working in a mixed group can be a bridging process, ex. the interview situation where pairs of Hungarians and migrants were asking locals.

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Why do you think your Workshop adds diversity to the city? Diversity aspects.

The fact that the group was culturally mixed provided an ambient where participants could share their memories and ideas that were often linked to a different cultural ambient (other country or other city in Hungary). Besides the above mentioned bridging between cultures the interview situation opened this opportunity for a wider public, to the locals too, even if for moments only.

Open Concepts that the Workshop has opened and can be applied onwards, in future Workshops on the city.

Involving urbanist experts in the learning and creation process; working more on this transformation from experiences/inputs gained in the city space to performative actions.