Interactive Train in Poland

At the beginning we have spread the news about the Interactive Train among youth in Leszno in Poland and the results were amasing! Many youngsters have decided to join to us. They are willingly to help with all animations, they are aslo willing to meet other people from other countries. I think that they are also very glad that so many people from freign countries will come here. However not only the youngsters are interesting in it. Many adults, city council and volunteers are ready to work. Most of the people who decided to help us are of the opinion that it will be great action which will force our society to live activly in a democracy. Even though there is lots of things to do, Interactive Train is a great undertaking which makes our society more awarness of democracy, and also causes that in our small city many people organize many actions on the street. Such actions are open for everybody and very intersting so people feel like they are invited to participate in such actions.

Though it's over it's just a beginning

the last day was intense. we started the morning with the evaluation session – personal and group evaluation of the training. the participants took it really seriously and gave us some good feedback. in addition, starting from the morning the participants were quite emotional – crying and tissues were a part of our final day! this shows how well the participants got along and how much they fell in love with each other! honestly, it has been one of the best groups i’ve met as there were no problems between the participants, everyone got along and took care of each other! they even managed to share the outdoor key when they went out – one of them always came and let those in who wanted to go back to the hostel earlier! and the free time or breaks they had, they spent together singing and playing the guitar! it was absolutely amazing. it seemed like they’re a real family already….

after lunch started brainstorming. we asked the participants to divide themselves into national groups and go over their local activities which should take place between May-July in all our partner countries. they had planned some draft activities before the training, now it was the time to make adjustments adding street animation elements if they wanted to and share their ideas. the session was connected with project management session as they had to plan their activities by answering the most basic and important questions – what are they planning, what is the aim, when and where the activities take place, who is the target group, who is gonna carry out the activities, what they need to carry them out, how they’re gonna promote, where they’re gonna promote, what kind of impact they see, etc.

i’m glad that the participants are excited to carry out their ideas and that we have so many different ones though the activities have some joint features. there are many partners who would like to organise something connected with environment and recycling. as it seems it’s one of the nowadays most important activity – how to use all that stuff we have in our homes in an useful way? some of the participants are preparing some workshops about street animation in their local communities, some of them are making performances in a cube, some of them are attending cycling event to promote the train and public transport, etc. when we have the finals of the local activities I’m gonna let you know exactly what you can see, where you can attend and when!

the session was continued with the follow up – some practicalities I needed to go through before the participants departure. and last but not least – the final activity and closure in the yard where the participants wrote their wishes into flowers and put them to the fountain so that they could open over there….

the participants got more sad, more tears, more tissues as the training was about to find an end….but it’s just the beginning of an endless friendship and an awesome project!

Barbeque - the key to happiness!

the following day was dedicated to acting – a session of the theatre oppressed where the participants had to act and improvise without any words at all. as the previous days had been really rough they needed some amusement. the participants were divided into groups. two groups at a time were asked to come to the stage. next our fabulous moderator brais gave them some topics and they had to improvise. loads of fun. after they short performance the jury – other participants and trainers – gave points!

after that we had a barbeque in the park. why? i tell you. the casa de juventud de amarante serves only vegetarian food on the concept of fair trade. that means that every day everyone got only dishes without any meat or fish. although i was extremely satisfied with the food (i felt like in heaven as everything was absolutely delicious and i seriously believe i gained a couple of kilos) the participants started complaining after few days. so that’s the reason why miguel, our incredible host, decided to organise us a lovely barbeque in a park. and you should have seen the faces of the participants – they were so happy and excited. especially my dear italian stefano!

in the evening the participants had a chance to attend two workshops – space acoustic and visuals. space acoustics was given bt rui with a meaning. during their performances the participants started to make too much noise on the streets. so there had to be something done – a workshop was the quickest solution. rui took the participants and went to discover amarante. finally they made a performance next to the cathedral when the bells started ringing. it was awesome. the visuals workshop was lead by monika with the idea to teach the participants to use visual materials in a proper way. the result of it was some interesting notes all around the hostel and city.

Key to improvement - another trail

as the experience of animating the streets in porto and on the way was tough, the trainers decided to give the participants another chance. the following morning we started with the reflection of what happened in porto. and that point we consider one of the key points of the training course. the participants brought themselves out everything that went wrong and what could have been done differently. the trainers even didn’t have to interfere with their remarks, just to guide the discussions and make conclusions. everything that happened on that morning was extremely powerful and helped a lot in group growing.

after lunch time we gave them another trial to make animation on the streets, this time in amarante. they divided each other into groups. though the experience was a lot better this time, it was still not good enough. but we were in the learning process and it’s always useful to have those not that good experiences on the training course not during the local activities or on the train. the amarante animation was better in that sense that they had a clear idea of what was happening. the only problem was that at one point it wasn’t street animation anymore but just loads of noise. the idea of the afternoon performance was to promote the happening in casa de juventud in the evening. the best performance of the training course took place during their march to the old town. they transformed miguel (portuguese participant) into “the box head”, it meant they made a box with smiling faces and ads and but it into his head. he couldn’t see anything, was guided by other participants. unfortunately as it turned out afterwards he couldn’t hear basically anything and that’s why he ended up crashing into cars and bushes.
in the evening we had adina’s birthday. we asked the house to bake a cake for her and made a lovely birthday surprise by singing happy birthday in all languages. she was happy as one birthday kid can be. as it got late and dark started the happening in the center. the participants did different activities with local youngsters. that was probably a very strong moment for the participants as the locals took actively part in their activities.
as a conclusion it must be noticed that giving a second chance is good and useful. life long learning – people are constantly in the learning process…..and from my point of view it’s good that the participants acknowledged what they did wrong and how to improve!

The Porto experience

on wednesday morning we started our journey to porto. the house was full of excitement, everyone ready to go, but what to take and what to leave behind? this was the trickiest question. the participants had prepared some promotional material + all the equipment for their performance. we as trainers and support team didn’t have a clue what they were planning. our only concern was to get everyone on the bus and leave the right time.

the trip to porto started by a 40 minute bus drive from amarante to regua. regua is a small city where you can take the train to porto. of course we could have taken the bus straight to porto, but as the overall project contains traveling through europe for three weeks, we decided to give the participants (and ourselves as well) the chance to experience traveling all together and performing on the train. the train performance of course wasn’t as it was supposed to be. we sent a letter to the portuguese train company that we would like to do some activities on the train from regua to porto, but got an answer soon that we should give them a plan in more detail and notice then a couple of weeks in advance. so there we were.
we arrived in regua 15 minutes before the arrival, took our lunch boxes and material. i bought the tickets and it was already time to go on board. as the train departed the participants started singing, playing guitar and chatting with complete strangers. although they were quite exhausted, they managed to keep up the mood….till a string of a guitar broke. i personally had a bad experience in train – lended my camera to someone to take pictures and afterwards there were no pictures at all! what a joy!
when we arrived in porto then the participants had their big moment coming. first they had to perform in the station. they had a quick meeting all together to make a plan. as it turned out than the plans they had made before were quite unuseful as the string broke. so here’s the first point – always have a plan b! after tight discussions and some fierce arguing they started their performance making loads of noise…..till the security guy came and it was suddenly over…..afterwards a man from the train company came to talk to us that we should talk to them in advance, gave his business card and asked to contact him if we need a group discount or any permissions. then we went to one plaza in porto. we, trainers and i, advised them to go to the riverside in the beginning and have some lunch first as it was already lunch time and we were pretty hungry. but as it was the day of the participants then they had to decide what are we gonna do, when and where. the trainers decided to step out of the process as it was time to learn to manage themselves as they have to do in august when we’re on the train rushing through italy, romania, lithuania, poland and portugal.
their idea was to do mime’s in the corner of the square next to the post box. in the beginning, telmo went to stand there with a sign, next people started sitting in front of them to see what is going on. unfortunately this was a mistake as they closed the route where people where going through. in addition they ran to the middle of the square to do “zip-zap”, a game which they had practiced here so many times and spiced up with typical elements of the training. still they were enjoying what they were doing though they had planned something else and everything didn’t turned out like supposed to.
after a break in the square we went to the main street to do some activities over there. though they managed to do what they wanted, then there was still something missing – the message! they had stayed up half the night before to do some promotional material – a sign saying street animation and active participation! this should have been one of the messages to spread, but they left the signs outside of their activities and it rather looked like someone playing some games on the street. couldn’t see the purpose of their activities.there was clearly no leadership nor moderation. people were having discussions and no one stood up to say: guys, this is what we’re going to do. they were still speaking in the tense “i” not “we” as it should have been. although after a couple of days it seemed that they have a good group feeling, there was missing the ability to work as a team which unfortunately spoilt many things.
after the activities on the main street – santa catarina – we took our way to the riverside to have a break. i must say that it’s quite difficult to move with such a big group but we managed. after a nice break in a cafe the group split up – the youngsters went their way, some of the trainers went their way. so basically we went sightseeing on our own and with some guidelines given by brais and just chatted and enjoyed porto! later we met brais next to the cathedral, met some of the participants and it was already time for dinner. we asked the participants to meet us 19.30 in the square where we were in the morning. and can you believe that all of them were on time? absolutely amazing. after a dinner, we catched the bus back to amarante.