Our route in August

Here's our route in August - Italy-Romania-Lithuania-Poland and Portugal. Soon we'll have exact details available.

1st of June in Resita, Romania

For the 1st of June, the Children's Day, we organised in our town some events for children involving workshops of face-painting, baloon modeling, creative use of all kinds of recycled materials and interactive games. We managed to involve the local community as well, a kindergarden, a school and also the Municipality.
We wanted to have it outside but unfortunately the bad weather didn't allow it. However this didn't keep the volunteers from participating and the children from showing up.

Here are some images.. enjoy!




The volunteers


The animators


Baloon modelling


Face painting


The clowns


Face painting


Workshop


Games with the kids


Baloons


Workshop


Twister


Face painting


Games for kids


The volunteers at the baloon modelling workshop



Games for kids


The team of volunteers

Lithuanians 1st action during Vilnius Street Music Day

On May 1st our partners from Vilnius, Lithuania had their first local action connected with street animation. 1st of May was the Street Music Day in Vilnius and as our partners just had come back from Amarante with their new street animation skills, they decided to join the music day and implement one of their activities.
Our Lithuanian youngsters created a "flat" in the middle of the street with a sofa, a carpet and everything else that is typical to a normal apartment + put on some tunes. During their performance the participants of the Lithuania Academy of Music and Theatre made some short sketches and improvisational acts combined with street animation tools. Their act was that popular that it even captured the attention of mass media - a picture in the newspaper and short broadcast in local TV.

Triin

Implementing local activities

As you all might now then at the moment we're in the phase of implementing local actions in all our partner communities in Poland, Romania, Lithuania, Italy and Portugal. The local activities are implemented during the months of May, June and July!
The local activities are very different and soon you will here more about them here!

Triin

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.