“Roads to Solidarity”: Looking Back at #ISW2019

This year’s International Summer Workshop took place at wannseeFORUM from 20-28 July, bringing together 46 youngsters from Sweden, the Czech Republic, Poland, Germany, and Spain for a nine-days youth exchange of artistic workshops, excursions, and friendship and community life. The project was made possible through the generous funding from the EU programme “Erasmus+ YOUTH IN ACTION” and the Berlin Senate Department of Education, Youth, and Families.

The topic of ISW19 was “Roads to Solidarity”, addressed and explored from many different angles in five artistic workshops led by professional international artists. In the music workshop (led by Kristina Jung), participants composed moving songs expressing their individual thoughts and feelings about solidarity. Participants of the B&W photography workshop (Silke Krüger) considered solidarity in the frame of contemporary society, whereas the theatre workshop group (Janusz Janiszewski) took as their starting point a historical reflection on the experiences of the Polish “Solidarność” movement in the 1980s, making a connection through to our days. The dance workshop group (Encarna Rubio Martinez) created different scenes and strong images of both solidarity and the lack of it, and the film workshop (Isabel Alvarez) produced a total of three short films of different genres (documentary, comedy, experimental) on various questions related to solidarity (see below for some of the workshop results).

After six days of of creative fun and hard work in the workshops the participants had the opportunity to present to the public on the second-to-last day their works and performances. Both the youngsters and the audience were impressed at how much the group had achieved in less than a week’s time. Again this project succeeded in bringing young people from different backgrounds together and making them overcome both cultural and personal boundaries. The general group atmosphere was characterized by tolerance, mutual acceptance, and respect, bringing the EU’s motto of “United in Diversity” to life – a core objective of the international youth education work of the wannseeFORUM Foundation.

Some workshop results:

Results from the B&W photography workshop:

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Final presentation of the music workshop

Final presentation of the theatre workshop (excerpts)

Results from the film workshop:

“What does solidarity mean to you?”

“My Pride”

“Boomerang”

The “International Summer Workshop 2019: Roads to Solidarity” was funded by the EU programme “Erasmus+ YOUTH IN ACTION”

and the Berlin Senate Department for Education, Youth, and Families.