Languages: English and Russian Deadline for submissions: 5:00 pm, Friday, 29 April, 2016 Project start date: 7 July, 2016 End date: 16 July, 2016 Eligible countries: Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Russia and Ukraine Age: 18 and up
ARENA: Community Theatre and Public Art is a three-year project launched in 2015. The project is aimed at improving the impact of peace building on both the local and regional levels through developing creative, art based strategies that have been proven to be locally suitable but which have cross-cultural implications.
ARENA is creating a safe and supportive platform and network for civil society actors from the Caucasus Region, Russian Federation and Ukraine in order to further empower civil society groups to develop joint strategies and methodological tool-kits to continue their work, based on the principal of ‘do no harm’.
ARENA: Summer School for Peace and Art will be organized this year in the framework of the project. The Summer School is for activists, independent artists, and creative people from Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Russia and Ukraine. From 7th to 16th July of 2016, the project implementing team will organize a fully funded 10-day Summer School in Georgia.
WHAT ARE THE OBJECTIVES?
- The summer school will be a platform for cooperation, mutual learning and support for civil society actors, independent creative people and artists.
- It will provide one of very few networking opportunities for representatives from the conflict affected Eastern Partnership countries where together, they will create artistic products that focus on the issues of militarism, propaganda, injustice, repression against civil society actors, and the development of more democratic societies.
- The creative results of the Summer School such as posters, short videos, films or theatrical performances will be made available to local communities as tools for initiating open public discussions on these issues.
- Donor organizations throughout the region will have a unique opportunity to meet and engage with interesting and creative peace activists and artists in hands-on workshops that will explore the use of art for social dialogue and change.
WHO CAN PARTICIPATE?
Approximately 35 independent actors, artists, filmmakers, cartoonists or other innovators from throughout the region will attend the summer school. If you are a creative from the countries mentioned above and interested in peacebuilding or human rights activism – ARENA is the right place to go and meet your colleagues from other regions and countries. Your involvement in the project will help empower and develop leadership capacities and the ability to encourage and activate community members to become more active and involved citizens. During the selection process, the recommendations of the ARENA project first year participants will be taken into consideration.
The criteria for selection are persons involved in art or creative activities such as theatre, creative design, animation or filmmaking who are at least 18 years old, have good access to and are trusted persons in their local communities. Our target is to have a gender balanced group of participants. Participants must be fluent in English or Russian.
WHAT WILL BE AFTER THE SUMMER SCHOOL?
Exchange projects between the participants’ groups will be developed and the most promising two will be funded based on quality and relevance to the ARENA project’s goals. This part of the summer school will create opportunities to learn and support, transfer new theoretical knowledge and develop stronger networks of like-minded actors.
A primary goal of this part of the school is to help the participants observe and analyse the interconnections between political and social developments in different countries in order to create a platform for the development of joint strategies for peace activists.
WHERE THE SUMMER SCHOOL WILL BE HELD?
The event will be held in a resort town in south-central Georgia called Borjomi.The resort is situated within one of the most beautiful gorges in the Borjomi district.
Please note that only selected candidates will receive additional information about the venue of the Summer School along with the day by day agenda.
HOW TO APPLY?
All interested parties should submit the Letter of Interest in accordance with the form below. Letters of interest should be submitted in MS WORD format.
The deadline for submission is 5:00 pm, Friday, 29 April of 2016.
Completed applications should be e-mailed to [email protected] with a subject line “Summer School”.
Please note that only selected candidates will be contacted.
For questions and comments, please apply to Inga Luther at [email protected] (in German or English) or Armine Zakaryan at [email protected] (in Russian or English).
Please see the application form under the links below:
Click here for more information about the Summer School (PDF, 1.28 Mb)
Летняя школа Мира и Искусства «Арена» (на русском языке, PDF, 1,34 Mb)
The Project’s German Partner – OWEN – Mobile Akademie für Geschlechterdemokratie und Friedensförderung e.V.
The project “Arena: Community Theater and Public Art” is supported by the zivik (Civil Conflict Resolution) programme of the Institute for Foreign Cultural Relations (ifa) with means from the German Federal Foreign Office.
