CREATIVE FERTILIZATION


Being creative means to be conscious of our needs and capabilities and to be able to express ourselves, our skills, our wishes, having an active role in our social context and in our life.

Creative Fertilization arises from ARCI’s fundamental principles: the promotion of associations and the right to culture, in all its forms and languages, as a factor of social cohesion, an instrument of civil engagement, to promote peace and citizenship rights, to fight against all forms of exclusion and discrimination. According to these principles “Creative fertilization” suggests a view on education (understood in a non-formal way) as basic way to democracy, relying on everybody’s free participation and expression.

The project's objective is to promote creativity as a key factor for the development of personal, social and even professional skills and the well-being of all individuals of the civil society. As a vehicle of self-expression and recognition of personal skills, creativity is an invaluable instrument to increase self-respect and even prevent youth unrest and social marginalization.

Creative fertilization wants different people, cultures and approaches to talk together for the research of good strategies able to develop an education thought as essential democratic moment based on everybody's freedom of participation and expression.

This blog wants to be a creative platform to exchange experiences, good practices, ideas and reflections about creativity's promotion.

Join us and let's try to find together more and more ways of being creative!!!!!


THE PROJECT

lunedì 11 gennaio 2010

WHO WE ARE

ARCI ANCONA:
ARCI is an independent association for social and civil promotion. At national level, with more than a million members and 5400 clubs, it provides an extended structure of democratic participation.
ARCI Ancona has been committed to cultural promotion for over 15 years so as to stimulate youths and other citizens to commit themselves within their own social context.
ARCI clubs are established as open places for youth creativity, providing various cultural experiences and spaces and opportunities in which young people become protagonists and creative actors within the civil society. Therefore, the fundamental objective of ARCI is that of investing its responsibility, autonomy, independence and creativity in youths.
Specifically, ARCI Ancona carries out various local and international cultural promoting activities: concerts, musical festivals, cultural, theatrical and literary events. It has established a partnership with the Marche Region for cooperation projects with the Balkans, with the purpose of stimulating the creation of local cultural enterprises. Moreover from this year it manages a welcoming project for political refugees within the province of Ancona.
ARCI Ancona (like most other ARCI clubs present on the territory) has for years hosted young volunteers from the National Civil Service so as to offer a year long experience of personal, professional and “civil” growth.
However since 2009 we started working whit EVS Projects.

OUR PARTNERS

CLUBE DESPORTIVO AMARENSE:
The "Clube Desportivo Recreativo Cultural Amarense" is a collectivity without any lucrative endings. It was founded in 1978 and has been developing its activity in favour of the Youth, organizing activities related to sports, culture and recreation. In sports, it has offered the opportunity to practice federate athletics and handball, as well as recreation activities such as aerobics, walkings, sportive holiday programmes, summer camps, among others.
In the cultural area, through a group of young people called "Animares", animation group, we have developed some activities of street animation (juggling, stilts, fire spitting, drums, giant figures, theatre, etc.). Annually, we organize several activities which offer the youth the acquisition of new abilities and knowledge through workshops of marionettes, drama, poetry, conferences about sexuality, and the participation in workshops promoted by other entities, such as the Imaginarius Festival, in Santa Maria da Feira, and the Youth Portuguese Institute, in Braga.
However Animares is the responsible group for the creation of the Carnival Parade of Amares for a long long time. It attracts every year thousands of curious people in search of a good chance to laugh, have fun and express personal creativity. Some of this work is done, every year, by the group of youngsters who incorporate Animares, Group of Street Animation. But another big part depends on the work done by another generation of people. Participants’ age can go from 12 to 70. From the initial stages where the theme and organization is discussed, this interaction between generations is thought to produce the best results. The development of the cars is mainly done by the young group but always in contact with the older generation who are in charge of the costumes and other hand-tasks.There has also been some cooperation with foreign artists from the festivals of Viareggio and Nola in Italy. The international experience of some members who participated in Youth Festivals of Street Animation has also a great impact in the way of working and in the final result of the parade.

JANUN:
Janun e.V. was founded in 1989 by several youth environmental initiatives in Hannover.
While during the first years after the establishment , nature – and environmental protection stood in the centre of activities, other topics added over the years.
At the moment there are around 80 young people actively involved in the following working groups. Most of them are conected to the idea of non formal learning. Big part of the concept is the idea of "learning by doing": Young people are working in the following working groups/directions:
Environmental education, Radio ( producing an own monthly radio programme - not right now), Nature observation, Indigenous peoples, “KonsuMensch” – consumerism & globalisation, Belarus & Chernobyl, Siberia, Serbia, Multicultural society & Migration, Utopia & Lifestyles.
Over the year there are around 20 weekend seminars and 10 – 12 international youth exchanges, mainly with partner organisations from Belarus, Siberia, Poland and Serbia, taking place.
In the context of a bigger project we currently built up contacts to Sweden and Greenland.
The volunteers are being supported in their projects by two pedagogues and two participants of the voluntary ecological service.
Further than that there are two big projects which are supervised by two other pedagogues.
These are the projects “Kleiner Jugendtreff Südstadt”, a small youth centre and a children and youth participation project. These two projects are done by JANUN for the city of Hannover.

KALAMARIS YOUTH ASSOCIATION:
The Kalamáris Youth Association was established in 1993 with the aim of serving info for youth and youth workers and helping people to create their own community.
We usually organize programs for youth, mainly small festivals but we also participate with our “Pocoló” tent in one of the biggest music festivals in Hungary, these programs are mainly volunteer based programs, cause from 2004 one of the main aim of the association is to popularize volunteer work among youngsters so we also joined some EVS projects as a sending partner.
Then from 2005 as a coordinator (Northern-Great Plain Region) and hosting organization we participate (2008/09 will be the third year) in the Hungarian national volunteer service called “ÖTLET”. The main tasks are organizing trainings, meetings for volunters and hosting organizations then monitoring the whole program in the level of volunteers and program organizations who are hosting volunteers. Some of our volunteers had possibility to participate in youth exchanges, Leonardo da Vinci program, international seminars, trainings.
One of our new initiatives is the so called “Pocoló Nomád”creative tent, where youngsters can pass their time actively but also having a rest. For example playing games, puzzles, painting, creating things from pearls etc., while listening music or any other kind of interesting discourse. We realize these small festivals in small villages, in the Nort-Eastern part of Hungary. These programs are also based on a work done by youth workers in the local community. The aim is to help youngsters realizing values in their villages and to show them possibilities about how can they be active, how can they make more colourful their life. During these programs youngsters have possibility to counsel with psichologist, carrier advicer and international possibilities.
The association is Youth Infopoint too and member of Eurodesk network so using this possibility we hope that in the future we can participate in more programs in the frame of Youth in Action, helping youngsters to be more open-minded, to use their creativity, and to study in a non-formal way. We also pass these info for local youth info points and youth workers.
We also have a winner project (cooperating with an other association and youth organizations in our region) to create a regional web page what would be a ‘Virtual youth house’ where we want to serve international info too, so we are opened to cooperate in international level.

YETOPONEESE:
We are a group of creative dreamers.
As a collective we share the same motto: If you want to change something, do it!
Working towards this idea we have built a participatory space in which, everyone can be listened and everyone have the opportunity to express their opinions and views and to develop their own projects.
Since 2004, our first guideline is to do things that make us happy.

Our working areas are:

1.“Baobab Planet” Area or cooperation area.
In this group we believe that another world is possible, with justice and solidarity between countries.
Like a “baobab tree” that is holding on social participatory roots. It grows with people empowerment (who reflect, form opinions and decide) and it stretches with cooperation, hope, equality, education, art and creativity branches.

2.“Art conquering the streets” or creative Activism area.
We will to transform public spaces in our region into participatory spaces where creative active participation can be real.
Our group believe that art can be a strong tool to raise awareness about social issues and ARTivism could be used as a way to express our social concerns.
We facilitate places where groups can transform their concerns and social worries in Artistic actions, sharing their opinions and being active citizens. Within this process we have created different performances, installations, video- screenings, stand-up comedy, mural art and stencils, etc.

3.ParticipAction Area.
In our activities we always promote children and youth participation. We believe in their protagonist role regarding the issues we reflect about in our workshops and activities. That is, they became active actors analyzing their reality and proposing possible solutions to improve it. Finally we try to make their ideas and improvements visible to the local community, the politicians and civil society.

4.“Walking in Europe” or Youth in Action area:
One of our objectives as a group is to include European dimension in our projects. We organise and participate in different Youth in Action initiatives. We promote and give information to our volunteers about its opportunities and resources.
Working in European level give us the opportunity to get to know other collectives and organizations in order to built common projects and broaden our network.

5.“Dreams factory” area.
Our organization is a participatory space where our volunteers have the possibility to give their opinion and develop their own projects.
Our volunteers are an important part of “ye too ponese” giving energy, creativity and “fresh air” in our daily work.

C.N.G.E.I. National scout organization - Ancona Departement