We don’t want to start with why things haven’t happened for over two years, but what is going to happen now, this year and in the future.
This year, 2022, we have two Erasmus + projects running in parallel. One is called Freedom is Participation in Power: Youth Activism in times of political uncertainty with four partners, Opera Circus, b-side, both in Dorset, UK, Beats Across Borders from Denmark and Termokiss in Pristina, Kosovo.
- https://www.operacircusuk.com
- https://b-side.org.uk
- https://www.beatsacrossborders.com/organisation
- https://www.facebook.com/Termokiss/about
There are two main week-long residencies in Pristina 20 – 28 April and on the island of Portland in Dorset, 17 -25 June.
At the same time Opera Circus was invited to partner with Centro Studi Sereno Regis in Torino, Italy and co-created an Erasmus + project called P-ART: Participatory Arts in Youth Work, this is what’s called a Youth Worker’s Mobility project and is about sharing and learning new skills in the use of arts when working alongside young people and artists/facilitators.
There are three events with this Erasmus, a Study visit in Bridport, Dorset between the 20th and 25th June, running alongside and participating with the Portland residency; a training week in July in Torino, Italy and a TCFT-like youth residency in Bratunac and Srebrenica from 31 July – 8 August. We are hoping to add a few days on at the end and have a TCFT reunion there, not sure how at the moment but would love to see as many people as possible there, if we can make it happen. This final residency will be held 50% in Bratunac and 50% in Srebrenica including evening music and arts events.
The partners for P-Art are:
ITALY Centro Studi Sereno Regis Lead organiser
UK Opera Circus
GREECE Schedia Stin Poli Artistic Pedagogic Youth Organisation
SERBIA Vojvodjanski Gradjanski Centar
TURKEY Genclik ve Degisim Dernegi
PORTUGAL Al Teatro – Teatro do Arade, Associacao Cultural
NORTHERN IRELAND Carrigart Youth and Community Group
BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA Dom Kulture Bratunac Youth Leadership Team
DENMARK Beats Across Borders
Because we are no longer part of the EU and the UK government refused to participate any longer in any EU funding including Erasmus, we are looking at how we can continue, now we can travel again…perhaps this time looking at our journeys and our work together in light of the climate emergency and the social justice that we should focus on in all of our projects.
We still have the Council of Europe**, for the moment. The European Convention on Human Rights was the first Council of Europe’s convention and the cornerstone of all its activities. It was adopted in 1950 and entered into force in 1953.
Francesco Pipparelli, a youth leader, activist, artist currently studying an MA in Communications at Latvia University will be an Erasmus intern with Opera Circus from July – October 2022. Part of Francesco’s plans for this period will be to explore how TCFT can continue and develop without Erasmus + funding, through other partners, different forms of funding, social enterprise, hosting, creativity, hosting festivals. He will be in touch with all of us as he begins to lead on this idea amongst others.
More news soon on either the Opera Circus blog or the TCFT web site.
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*https://thecompletefreedomoftruth.com
** https://www.coe.int/en/web/human-rights-convention
