© 2018. PHOTO BY LYUBOV MARTINETS, UKRAINE
“The power of video can be used by communities to change the world around them for the better. Video can be a tool for mobilizing people to take action, empowering victims of human rights violations, and promoting reconciliation in conflict-affected communities.”- said Armen Sargsyan, the producer of Yerevan based media NGO, Centre of Media Initiatives.
Since 2016 Armen is involved in the ARENA network, that was established within the framework of the project “ARENA: Community Theatre and Public Art”. The project was launched in 2015 by two NGOs – Peace Dialogue from Armenia and OWEN e.V. from Germany. Currently many civil society groups from Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Ukraine and the Chechen Republic, St. Petersburg and Rostov regions of the Russian Federation are actively involved in the project.
Along with other network members, Armen strives to support human rights and peacebuilding efforts of the civil society actors in the Eastern Partnership region and Russia. This time Armen, together with his colleague Gegham Vardanyan, was invited for facilitating a four-day master classes of using video for advocacy that was held from 2nd to 5th of May in Novocherkassk, Russia. The idea of organizing such a video school came from the ARENA network members – a Russian NGO Union of Women of Don from Novocherkassk. The group was interested in receiving concrete instruments for executing awareness raising campaigns that will organize people to become involved in solving various issues that exist in their community. Thus, the aim of the school was to explore how the videos can be made more accessible to different audiences and to encourage and empower the participants in using videos as an instrument for social change.
The group of participants of the four-day school of using video for advocacy consisted mainly of people from Novocherkassk. However, the project team involved several members of the ARENA network from other countries or people who were delegated by the network members.
Noteworthy, that two of the ARENA project participants, Lyubov Martinets from Ukraine and Zulfiya Safkhanova from Azerbaijan, were involved as co-facilitators of the training. The purpose was to further strengthen the regional network and to involve new actors from the mentioned regions.
In total 23 participants of different age-groups and professions attended the school. With the support and mentorship of the facilitators and co-facilitators they learned the basic skills of video-making, script writing, video editing, etc. During the training, participants developed three topics that according to them are relevant in their community and made three videos that will be further distributed through the local online media resources.
“It was a great experience for me to work with this mixed group.” – said L. Martinets, – “At the beginning I was concerned with the participants’ difference of ages (there were people from 18 to 65). But the participants were so motivated that the age difference was not relevant at all. They have been doing all the tasks with the great enthusiasm and interest.”
At the end of the event, the team of the project “ARENA: Community Theatre and Public Art” announced that the next round of the “ARENA: Summer School for Peace and Art” will be held in Borjomi, Georgia in August 2018 and encouraged the attendees to apply for the participation.
© 2018. “ARENA: Community Theatre and Public Art” is a project of Peace Dialogue NGO (Armenia).
The Project’s German Partner – OWEN – Mobile Akademie für Geschlechterdemokratie und Friedensförderung e.V.
The Project’s partner in Russian Federation – the Union of Don Women
The project “Arena: Community Theatre 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.
The Project’s media products have been created with the technical assistance of the Media Initiatives Centre NGO (Armenia).
