A Chance for the Youth in Culture Issues

 

 

Renewed Belle-Vue brewery hosted ART2WORK and LASSO conference, which took place on Tuesday, October 9. Through videos and speaking about their experiences, the two rapporteurs presented their projects —cofunded by European Regional Development Fund—, which is addressed to young people, from 12 to 30 years, to let them improve their lives through cultural initiatives.

 

Ine Vos, representative of LASSO (Brussels network for cultural participation and art education) opened the session introducing their urban project, "Move It Kanal", and screening a short video focused on last season closing event. The aim of the project is to stimulate young people from Brussels Canal Zone to take part in culture, through workshops, events, and collaborations with museums. She focused on how important it is to bring youngsters next to culture and art, because sometimes the chance to participate in it is not given them, but what youth do is important not only for them but also for people around them.

  

Then she passed the torch to Wim Embrechts (funder of ART2WORK association), who screened a suggestive video which summarized a six week period during which some boys and girls have been supervised by ART2WORK coaches to change their lives. 

 

The idea at the base is to let youth become aware of their abilities and their dreams to start building their future on them: "I am," "I can", "I want" is what first weeks were focused on, because some youth do not know who they are, which their aspirations are and which real dreams they have, because they never focused on them. They think to not have the chance to change their future, so coaches threw them challenges to let their self-esteem grow up and let them understand what they have the power to do and a psychologist followed them all training long. 

 

Last weeks of the training focused on "we start" and it is then that participants had to realize everything they thought about in the previous six weeks. Embrechts explained that ART2WORK try following the youth they work with even when training sessions end because they will ever be there for them, as a family should do.

 

After the meeting, Ine Vos answered some questions. 

 

 

—It depends. We did one project last year for a couple of months and one of my colleagues organized a cultural programme for the youngsters: they attended workshops, they went to museums, they went to performances and stuff like this. So it lasted a few months, but it took a while to prepare, of course. We worked on it for almost a year.

 

 

—That is something we are definitely in the vision to do. For instance, yesterday we started the project with a museum and two schools. It normally lasts until the end of April and then we receive an evaluation in June. It should finish here, but then we say "Let’s meet again next year to see what is changed!". It is something that neither museums nor schools have time to do because for them the project is finished, they have written the funding report. So we want to go back a year later to see if pupils remember what they did and if these cultural projects had an impact on them. It is helpful for teachers too because they will start thinking about new ways of teaching in school and to do more different things.

 

 

—It is co-funded by Europe. We invested €1.4 million in toto: €1.2 were from Europe and €0.2 has been put by ourselves. We are a no-profit organization, so now we are looking for other funders, apart from Europe, because we want to continue, but of course, it needs to be employed people to continue it, so we are writing a follow-up.