„Opening Doors – Reaching Young People“ is the title of a key theme in the successful 2022 application „Civic Youth Education in the AdB.“ Joint seminar projects with young people and multipliers focus on mutual learning between the cooperation partners wannseeFORUM and Gangway eV (street social work in Berlin): The aim is to explore and develop exemplary formats for civic youth education as a collaboration between an educational institution with overnight accommodation and open youth social work.
At wannseeFORUM, we want to create protected spaces for empowerment where all participants can learn together, support each other, and experience self-efficacy and empowerment.
In 2023, in cooperation with Gangway eV, the first short formats of the „open door“ as „taster weekends“ were offered to allow people to get to know the wannseeFORUM as a place of learning.
The joint summer project „Gangway-Summertime“ was a first step for all seminar participants in trying out a format of civic youth education for exchange and idea development on self-selected socio-political topics with reference to the local reality of the participating young people, young adults and multipliers.
Essential for this is the Educational approach of the Gangway Street College. The experience of young people, who typically have to operate within pre-defined learning settings/programs, is explicitly contrasted here with the self-determination of learning content, methods, timing, and learning objectives. Accordingly, a program was developed that corresponded to this approach within the framework of the wannseeFORUM, encompassing educational goals, funding conditions, and conference logistics.
The seminar began with a focus on getting to know one another and exchanging ideas among all participants regarding learning content, formats, and objectives. The starting point for discussion was two projects already underway at the Street College: a film project on environmental protection and sustainability, and an exhibition project. „Metamorphoses. What does Berlin do to me?“. This involved topics that are also a focus of the wannseeFORUM: examining the realities of young people's lives in Berlin, a place where social crises and processes of change are particularly evident. The goal of the seminar days at the wannseeFORUM, discussed in advance with potential participants, was to further explore these topics in terms of content and socio-political context, develop new ideas, and implement them in various media. At the start of the seminar, the possibilities and framework within the wannseeFORUM were explored (from the Respect Charter to film equipment), and all needs were discussed to ensure that the wannseeFORUM could function as a safe space and self-directed learning environment, in line with the educational approaches of both cooperation partners.
Various locations were available for creative media production, always accompanied by content-related and technical guidance from instructors, participating multipliers, and/or social workers. In the film area, participants created (according to their own self-reflection) promotional videos on environmental protection/sustainability that were critical of capitalism, as well as a dance choreography on the theme of the human-Earth connection and the storyboard for its film adaptation. Camera and editing techniques were taught for the production. A new film project also emerged, addressing questions of origin, identity, respect, and individual agency within society. This project included a script and filming of scenes from Goethe's "Iphigenia in Tauris," a classic drama exploring themes of equality, autonomy, the image of humanity, and humanism. An idea brought by one participant led a small group to discuss the political relevance of the work for them as young people and develop their own interpretation.
To explore nonverbal expression on the theme "What does Berlin do to me?", participants experimented with cyanotype as a photographic printing process, papermaking, and painting. All activities were open to everyone, so even the film group experimented with cyanotype. In the painting workshop, for example, pictures were created for the series "My Neighbors," and using cyanotype and transparencies, visual motifs were developed to depict different perspectives on life in Berlin (e.g., regarding LGBTQIA*).
Due to the process-oriented nature of the seminar, the completion and immediate presentation of products was not a learning objective. All works created or started in the "Gangway Summertime" seminar are to be shown in live performances/exhibitions in the urban space of Berlin, thus providing all participants and multipliers with a further experience of self-efficacy.
The seminar was supported by the Senate Department for Education, Youth and Family.
It took place as part of the collaboration in the program „Civic youth education in the AdB“ in the project group „Social Question and Civic Participation“ instead, funded by the Federal Ministry for Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth.
