Programme & action: ERASMUS+, Key Action 1: Training course
Venue: Bédeille, Ariège, France
Dates: 28 September – 9 October 2015
Participants: Marek Doseděl, Gabriela Zmeškalová, Barbora Jurašková
Please read the project summary and info-pack and project booklet
Hosting organisation: SolAfrika
Participating countries: Czech Republic, France, Italy, Bulgaria, Estonia, Romania, Cyprus
Project report:
Kindness, warmth, fun. These are just a couple of words which I would recollect if you tell me training course “Alternative communication.” It was amazing 2 weeks in a beautiful and peaceful southern village called Bédeille, which is half an hour from Toulouse by train. This project was about citizenship. What it means to us, how we can improve things in our society or how can we express our opinions etc. The days were passing usually very fast due to the fact we were such a great group full of clever, kind and warm people. After one week we almost considered other people as a family. We usually had 2 blocks of workshop a day, one in the morning and one in the afternoon. During the day we had tasks, cooking, cleaning, dishwashing for instance. Even these activities helped us to get to know each other better.
First workshop was called Clown activism led by two experienced clowns. They told us what it feels like to be in clown disguise, how the people or police usually react, what they want to pass to the society. We could everything experienced on our own by many games. On Saturday morning we even got the opportunity to visit local market and play in front of public! We discovered clowns are not only for make fun of themselves or other people, their main goal is to raise questions, make the people think about many different topics.
Second workshop was about advertising and our leaders were two ad creators. We had a discussion what the ad creators want to pass to the passers-by or other people. Our task was to re-make an old advertisement into new one. We had to use our creativity and imagination which was very funny but demanding and challenging as well.
Third workshop was called Theatre of the oppressed. We had to create a short performance for kids from 3-5 and 6-11 containing this subject matter. It was really demanding because we had only one day to prepare for everything. Anyway we dealt with it successfully, everyone really enjoyed it.
Besides these workshops, we discovered many different things about other countries because every evening was dedicated to one of the participating country. We tasted foreign food, beverages and we even tried to dance!
We got to know many interesting information, opinions and we met such a special people. Everyone had a great time there and nobody wanted leave this magic place.
Marek Doseděl
