Between the 8th and the 15th of July 2012, in Grenaa, Denmark, the „Action Street Art 2012” youth exchange took place, with participants from: Romania, Denmark, Italy and Estonia. The project’s purpose was creating an original show for children in schools, making new friends and learning about other cultures around Europe. To know each other better the participants experienced four intercultural evenings where each country presented its traditions and traditional food. Thus, each participant was able to learn something about other people from each country.

More on the project here.

 This meeting had participants from Italy, Latvia, Macedonia, Portugal, Romania, Serbia & Denmark.

The Romanian team: Alina Chetrosanu, Valeria Cristia, Marian Enache, Nicolae Fierbinte.

More on this project here.

Between the 21st and the 28th of April 2012, in Vordingborg, Denmark, „Bridges 2012” youth exchange took place, and the participants came from: Romania, Denmark, Italy, Turkey and Iceland. The project’s purpose was creating an original show for children in schools, making new friends and learning about new cultures around Europe.

More on the project here.

The Drums for Peace Network which A.C.T.O.R. is part of, had its general meeting in which the network board was chosen: Bo Otterstrom, Massimo Capano, Andy Penny and Eugenia Barbu. This meeting marks the change of strategy of this European Network, whose primary objective was the usage of art or of different artistic ways for social changes in intercultural context, having as target group youth. The host of the event was the Sliperiet organization coordinated by Jan and Monica in the city of Örnsköldsvik, Sweden. The local press noted this event.

More on the project here.

The “Man in the Mirror” youth exchange took place in Kohila, Estonia between the 21st and the 28th of October 2012 with participants from Italy, Estonia, Portugal, Wales and Romania.

This project’s purpose was to develop solidarity and tolerance among young people, helping them understand their individuality in a group through the spectrum of activities happening away from their home country.

More about the project here.

The Training Course “More Young For A Better Future! Preparing youth organization for sustainable EVS cooperation realized by TAŞEV Training Culture and Youth Association, Gaziantep-Turkey is aimed to improve the preparation of current and future EVS host, sending and coordinating organizations in order to ensure quality standards for European Voluntary Service activities in cooperation between programme countries and neighbouring partners countries from South Eastern Europe (SEE) and the development of the cooperation between programme countries and neighbouring partner countries from SEE within the YOUTH in ACTION programme. Furthermore the project offers the opportunity for the exchange of experiences and good practices between EVS sending and hosting organizations from programme countries and SEE partner countries.

More on the project here.

„New life for traditional stories” is the new project financed through the Grundvig Program – Partnerships in which A.C.T.O.R. will be involved in starting with 2012 for the next two years. The participating organizations are members of the Drums for Peace Network and come from Italy, Portugal, France, Estonia, Finland, Denmark and Romania. Between 4 and 7 of October 2012 the planning meeting of the project has been hosted in the city of Cinisello Balsamo, near Milano, Italy. The workspace has been offered by the city hall in a modern cultural centre. The debates were centred on aspects about the administration of the project, planning the working agenda, working methods and ways of collecting information for preparing de promoting materials and dissemination materials for the project. The charm and the specific Italian atmosphere generated a pleasing working ambiance. A.C.T.O.R. representatives were Eugenia and Stefanita BARBU

In July 2012, Eugenia and Stefanita BARBU of A.C.T.O.R. took part in the Grundvig Partnership Inclusive Toolbox evaluation meeting held in Lousa, Portugal. The hosts, Activar organization, gave the participants from Italy, Luxembourg, Spain, Poland and Romania the chance to interact with series of key actions of the organization’s activities  which had as its main goal the social inclusion of people with different categories of disabilities. A ceramic workshop was most impressive for it valued the cultural manner of the area and also they visited a very impressive medical recovery centre for mental and physical handicap. An unforgettable experience is the visit to the art exhibition in a close-by village which was almost abandoned being placed in an isolated mountainous area. A very strong moment was when the members of Activar presented a movie about an adopted child, movie made using the shadow theatre technique they learned about in the mobility held in Romania by Eugenia Barbu in July 2011.

The “Shadow Theatre” workshop organized by A.C.T.O.R. between the 18th and the 24th of November 2012 in Codlea (Brasov) through the Grundvig Program, brought together 12 participants from England, Italy, Estonia, Belgium, Austria, Portugal and Romania.

During the week, they experimented the magic of shadow theatre. The participants explored different types of visual, non-verbal communication, through which they could create extraordinary moments with just a light source, some pieces of paper and carton and recycled materials.

Each session brought the participants a new challenge of conception and moment creation for the show starting from: a given background soundtrack or from two images with no connection, or a song they heard for the first time, etc..

The third workshop Grundvig “Puppetry in Communication” brought together participants from Belgium, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Germany, Italy, Latvia, Slovenia, Spain and Turkey. For a week, they worked together experiencing different animation techniques and different types of puppets.
The participants explored various types of verbal and nonverbal communication, and different ways they can build expressive puppets using only recycled materials and all of these helped to learn how to communicate more easily through puppet theatre.
In the shadow theatre workshops, balloon modelling and building puppets of plastic bottles, the participants were able to build true mini-puppet theatre using both traditional tales of their countries and fantastic stories.

Check out the project’s magazine here!