What do such broad concepts as freedom and sustainability mean to young people living in vastly different places in a globalized world? In 2021, the pandemic restricted the freedom to implement a joint project on these topics in person, which would have involved working and staying at the wannseeFORUM as originally planned. However, digital tools and skills enabled a relatively quick transition to the digital realm for a pilot project that combined political education with intercultural education, language learning, and action-oriented media work. This was made possible through cooperation with the Goethe-Institut Berlin and the collaboration of all three departments of the wannseeFORUM Foundation: Political Education, Cultural Education, and New Media.
In January 2021, as a pilot project, 28 young people from Berlin and 34 scholarship recipients from around the world from the Goethe-Institut's "Schools: Partners for the Future" (PASCH) initiative met in a hybrid international project workshop. During the day, the Berlin youths worked in parallel workshops on rap, film, painting, stop-motion animation, and music at the wannseeFORUM with 14- to 17-year-olds from Indonesia, Mongolia, Thailand, South Korea, Latvia, Sri Lanka, Georgia, Ukraine, and Pakistan at their respective locations.
Both groups got to know each other virtually over two afternoons a week before the seminar began. This allowed them to show each other their schools and places of residence. In the project workshop from May 25th to 29th, 2022, the participants intensified their collaboration: In mixed groups, they explored the theme of freedom and sustainability using media and artistic methods.
A particular challenge for the young people from Berlin was, among other things, to introduce the German language to their international fellow competitors through intensive verbal exchange, thereby supporting and motivating them in learning German.
Due to the time difference, the young people from all over the world participated in the program each afternoon. In five parallel workshops, led by professional media producers and artists, they exchanged ideas and media-related perspectives on the topic, created collages, films, music, models, produced media, and rapped on a wide variety of aspects and ideas of freedom and sustainability – and, each in their own location, developed media products that reflect their current life situation and their experiences related to it.
They contributed their personal perspectives and their respective culturally shaped viewpoints. They learned about "international and global perspectives and answers" to major future issues. Despite technical challenges, excellent collaboration was achieved.
Participants were encouraged to explore ways to contribute to sustainable development through their own actions. Working in internationally composed teams, they independently develop projects on sustainability and freedom-related topics of their choice. In doing so, they learn about international/global perspectives and answers to major future challenges.
What does freedom mean to you?
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An example from the video workshop visualizes freedom, internationality, and sustainability in a very poetic way in 7:01 minutes: a paper airplane, carried by the wind, flies through the world from person to person, from place to place, and from video image to video image, capturing the young people's perspectives on freedom:
"What does freedom mean to you?": Freedom means to me:
- I want to learn everything I want; more precisely, I want to go to a university that suits me.
- My dream is to be a professor of German studies.
- Unfortunately, the limits of my freedom are very far away
- I would like to spend more time with my family and friends
- Unfortunately, I have very little free time because of school
- Because of Corona, we can't do anything at home and there's nothing that could be fun
- For me, freedom means being independent of the thoughts and opinions of others
- The limits of my freedom arise when I restrict the freedom of another person.
- Freedom means freedom of expression.
- For me, freedom is the opportunity to live life to the fullest and express oneself as one wishes, without being oppressed or restricted.
- My personal freedom is to love, to believe, and to express myself freely…
The short films “Two sides” and “Favorite places” show everyday places of young people, which are characterized by very different aspects of freedom – from the individual to the political, historical level.
But what does the future look like in terms of freedom and sustainability?
The stop-motion workshop created its own version of a "city of the future".
Freedom and equal opportunities?
In the rap workshop, participants raised questions about freedom and equal opportunities. Unfortunately, the video could not be published because not everyone gave their consent. The right to one's own image is also a fundamental right and, particularly in the context of practical media work at the wannseeFORUM, an important topic when it comes to shaping the digital public sphere through youth media productions, individual needs, and personal rights. An excerpt provides a brief glimpse into the workshop:
Rap: “Equal Opportunities” (not approved for publication by all participants)
"...they tell you that you're free everywhere,
it doesn't matter if you're rich or poor,
but you get nothing but their condolences.
No chance of equal opportunity.
We tell you that you're not free everywhere.
It does matter if you're rich or poor,
and you don't even get their condolences,
because here there's no chance of equal opportunity
...
There's a difference between rich and poor,
everyone has opportunities, but not the same ones
...
Every person has a right to freedom,
where is the equal opportunity?
..."
Images and sounds on the topic
The painting and music workshop groups also researched and discussed freedom and sustainability, then expressed themselves through drawings and sound recordings, respectively, and staged/arranged the results into a collaborative project through discussion. The painting exhibition was created from submitted drawings, which were printed on-site and arranged together (e.g., a ship collage). The sound collage and song also emerged from the digital exchange of files/recordings and subsequent discussions. "What does life sound like (during the pandemic)?" – you can hear it here on Audiyou.
Learning processes of all participants
The positive results of the evaluation confirm the validity of the seminar concept: Political and cultural education can be constructively linked with each other, as well as with language and media learning and international exchange, which – even if "only" in virtual form – opened up new perspectives for most of the participating young people. The importance of engaging with freedom and sustainability in an international exchange, especially during times of pandemic, was also reflected upon and emphasized by the participants.
Some international Pasch scholarship recipients were in lockdown in their countries and could only move about “freely” to a limited extent, which raised many personal and social questions regarding the topic of freedom.
The seminar is also a success for the wannseeFORUM Foundation in terms of the cooperation of all departments in the content-related, technical and methodological preparation and implementation of the hybrid seminar.
The COVID-19 pandemic gave digitalization in youth education – including at our organization – a significant boost. At wannseeFORUM, we were already able to draw on years of experience with online collaborative tools. Following initial online seminars in December 2020, we developed "comfortable" seminar guidelines for digital interaction
With each subsequent online and hybrid seminar, our knowledge, experience, and materials grew, as did the need for exchange. Under the title "On Zoom: Methods and Tools for Digitally Supported Learning During and After the Pandemic,"
we were able to conduct online professional development courses funded by the Federal Agency for Civic Education (bpb). We started internally within our pedagogical team to refine our own approaches – also for the international project workshop. We then shared the resulting concepts and extensive experience with other organizations nationwide in two events, addressing cross-cutting and cross-media challenges as well as media-specific challenges ranging from film to audio production.
The seminar experiences led to the WannseeFORUM Foundation's position paper on the implementation of digital educational formats in July 2021, which will be published in a revised version in the 2022 annual report.
We will continue to use and develop our experiences for digitally supported learning in various seminar formats – we look forward to more exciting formats!
The project was funded by the Senate Department for Education, Youth and Family and through cooperation with the Goethe-Institut Berlin.
