Once upon a time

“Once upon a time: fairy tales and myths across Europe” is a youth exchange under the Key Action 1 of the Erasmus Plus programme. It will gather 40 young people from Italy, Spain, Finland, Romania, Hungary, Slovakia ,Portugal and Latvia.

The description

We have noticed that in our society there is a constant increase in misunderstanding of what are the differences of cultures, the concept of diversity and other relevant bases which should be common if we think about Europe who has diversity as one of its core values.

This lack of common concept about the diversity that is seen as a value and asset is a fruitful soil for the spread of a lot of negative values such as xenophobia and Euroscepticism. It’s no doubt that as the world rapidly globalizes, diversity is becoming increasingly present across all aspects of life. The interconnectedness of the modern world is broadening our ability to communicate and integrate with people from different cultures.

The main aim

is to transfer to young people European values of diversity, intercultural understanding and sensitivity through the use of puppet theatre and traditional fairy tales.

Our specific objectives are

• To raise awareness on intercultural learning and sensitivity through the use of puppet theatre and storytelling by sharing traditional fairy tales and stories and by discovering concepts of identity and diversity;
• To enhance European values such as mutual understanding, tolerance, active citizenship and fight negative values as xenophobia, racism, homophobia and Euro-scepticism;
• To discover and exploit the potential of storytelling by presenting traditional fairy tales and using puppet theatre with the feedback of external experts as a valuable learning procedure to develop intercultural competence for young people;
• To create and perform a common intercultural fairy tale on the topic of intercultural learning by young people and present it in public as a puppet theatre for other young people at the international and local level.

Activities

• Peer to peer education
• Non-formal education
• The sharing of traditional fairy tales and stories of different countries involved
• The use of as street art as puppet theatre in order to represent them
• Get to know each other
• Team building
• Storytelling
• Introducing participants with Youthpass
• Preparation of puppets and preparing the puppets play

Participants

Each national team will consist of 5 participants (1 group leader and 4 group members)

Group leader (1 for each national group)

• age within 30,
• preferably experience on non-formal education and facilitation skills,
• leadership skills, management of group dynamics,
• preferably background on street art and theatre, Intercultural Learning skills.
• good knowledge of English.

Participants (4 from each country)

• 18-30 years old,
• have a will to participate in all the phases of the project,
• interest in intercultural learning and the main topic of the youth exchange,
• priority will be given to young people with fewer opportunities,
• committed to learn, participate fully to all activities actively.