Projects

We managed to get 14 very interesting, new and creative approaches for ours Middle East Expedition 2011.

Here is some information about the single projects. We will have updates on the different groups during the trip.

 

Animation

Art can be a way of changing society. Youth can express themselves through art by the technique of animation and cartoons. The product will be a short cartoon movie or film made by all participants. Using cartoons and animation as media can reach a broad segment of people, and especially children. Animation as media is a relatively new method in the Arab world and contains new ways of creative communication. The film will be made by the team, but will involve participants are the ones behind the story and becomes a main character  with an interactive cartoon character. This workshop contains strong values of MEXP as it will create dialogue, interaction and raise important questions of everyday life through the cartoon. This way of raising a debate through art will inspire more young people in society to engagement and new ways of expressing themselves.

 

Together we can make everything more beautiful (Subject to change).

How to make (trash) wastes into works of art in a simple way. Both participants and project creators (as trainers) learn from the proces.

Innovation and creativity of things out of nothing, the exchange of experiences, trying to get ideas and accurate scientific mission. To achieve an atmosphere of fun and happiness among the participants.

 

Short film

A workshop in each city to complete a film written and directed by the participants. The film is an expression of the ideas of the participants and reflected through the image to be closer to the viewers.

 

Cities fragrance and people’s on paper

The project’s aim is to increase the young people’s pride in their cultural heritage and promote the culture of selfexpression which will lead for sure to community development and its intergration. The project will create a great deal of intercultural dialouge and exchange. The project idea is to collect the feelings, emotions and ideas of the locals of each city we visit through drawing, talk and poems or combine them together to get a community product about:

1) Their city and traditions (the participants will talk about their city and traditions and what does it make it special)

2) Their mood and what is in their minds

3) Situation that influenced their life’s

All this through a book that its writer the citizens of those cities and each chapter represents a city.

Main goals :

1) Integration of young people in projects that serve their community.

2) Stimulate young people to take reasonability

3) Cultural exchange between the participants and the volunteers

4) Promote the culture of self-expression

5) Increase their pride of their cultural heritage

 

Different but Equal

Teaching journalistic patterns to target age groups, by producing documentaries on their daily life, using drama sketches in order to explore the effect of the press and media on individuals to raise awareness of the target audience on the role that media plays in society and how it effects the ongoing situation. Motivate the target audience and encourage them to express their opinions freely through journalism, sharing cultures and personal stories. And using dialogue discussions games and digital tools such as; cameras to document events and report them objectively to the word.The objectives are

1. Enable the young people to express their opinions, and promote voluntary work.
2. Encourage participation of the target audience in local environment.
3. Conduct discussions by the working group.
4. Encourage participation by the individual to promote self-confidence>
5. Journalism is not a mere academia business, and it is something that could be learned.
6. End fear of participants, so that they can speak the truth.
7. Provide the community with the real picture.

Name not sure yet – soon to come

Recycled Arts. Recycling used materials into fine arts, less pollution in the world and local societies that we visit. Transforming the materials by doing the local traditional art and hand made fine arts such as carpets or vases and so on but using the recylced materials and also the other arts from the participants from Denmark and Lebanon Jordan and Egypt. Spreading the awareness about taking responsibility at their own home towns and local villages from the dangers of pollution.

 

Reclaim your neighbourhood

Finding or enhancing your pride and quality of life in your nearest surroundings by using the public space for expression and engagement. We are focusing and communication, participation and playfulness. By paying attention to the neighbourhood we hope to enhance awareness of the possibilities in making use of resources we have nearby and to engage people in improvements of their daily environments. Parallel to this we will have a blog up running where we post pictures from the different cities, a forum will be open and we will post a “Wonder Route” from every city. The “Wonder Route” will be a route of a walk around town, where the small local wonders of the city are mapped. The local wonders can be everything from a favourite tree to cool street art.

 

Dreams of the future and everyday role models

We will discuss and exchange ideas and dreams of the future, from small to big scale. (From wanting to play football with friends, to being a big politician.) During the project we will do portraits of and together with the participants in the villages about their hopes and dreams of the future. We will also exchange our own dreams, and during this process we will prepare the portraits. The portraits will be expressed through various medias (preferably video, but it depends on what is possible). The participants will get the opportunity to tell their story, what they like and what they don’t like about their community and life in general and from whom they get inspired. This is one of the key aspects; to get inspired from people you know – people from your local community and to exchange ideas with them as well. This will lead to the participants doing portraits themselves – of their local role model – after having giving them some tools on doing portraits and using various media (which is not yet decided). This is to engage them in thinking further about their future and how they can use their social network.

 

Fair Play!

Reflection on fair- and unfairness.This project will use games, cooking and photographs as an informal way of discussing different topics and engage the participants at many levels. It is our idea that the participants will reflect on how it felt to be treated fair or to treat others unfair after playing the game. The idea is that there is no “right” way to experience.

 

Humor beyond boarders

The purpose of this project is to communicate different topics through humor by the means of photography and text. The message of the photo is to support a specific theme of the day, which will be discussed and decided on a meeting on the first day of the workshop where it is also decided what motives to capture and what text to write. One day the theme might be democracy, another day the theme might be relationships, a third day it might be environmental issues. Once decided on a theme, we execute the message through humor in an artistic and creative way. We wish to put focus on societal issues by using humor as the primary channel of communication and thereby engaging the local youth population in a range of activities including photography, writing and discussion groups. This is their project and their interpretation of a universal concept. Naturally, we are well aware of the fact that humour means different things to different people but that is quite ok.

 

Film animation

All movies are being produced when a whole team of ‘’lets say very old professionals’’ do it. But you never watch on the BIG screen or on the National Television a movie which made by youth and to youth.

The participants should make own film after being given the whole tools for this. Producing a good movie will give them the opportunity to express themselves and their way of looking to anything they want to talk about.

We are not aiming at producing a professional cartoon movie you see on the TV.

 

Relax and Concentrate

How many times do we get provoked and make fights when we’re talking with our friends about a sensetive subject, how many time from these times we actually know what the hell are we talking about without just being emotionally oriented towards some points beacuse of drugging out minds.

 

Theatre Pump And Tankit Peps

Our Project is an interactive form of theatre and Documantry talks (youth talking to a Camera) that encourages audience and Participants interaction exploring different options for dealing with a problem or issue.

Theatre part (Forum theatre): Through the audience participation new ideas and solutions to existing problems can be explored. The theatre setting can be a very powerful tool to explore difficult issues.

The idea is to play games and make some activities that can build trust and relation between participant and us openning the way for us and them to discuss and  know more about the red lines existing in our lifes then translating it into a play that provokes a redline to the small society surronding the particpants (their families).

Documnetary Talks + short movies : This part is divided into two : the first one is simple:

1. shooting the Mexp-work (theatre precisely ) with the particpants which allowing us to see (visually) the development of the paticipants through the 3 days working and how do mexp affect them. We are planning to show this movie back in Lebanon to the audience to tell about the experience.

2. at the same time some youths are going to be chosen to talk facing the camera about their lifes and how do they see their lifes in comparison with The Tankeh (the pepsi can) Our project title here is to ”Humanizing the Tankeh”, all of us drink pepsi but it differs from country to country and how each country look at it, pepsi for us is the human being and it also goes through the life passing differnt stages, it comes to life, someone drink, through it on the street (dies) and then coming back to life (recycling process) but maybe as a pepsi or as a different product, also we the humans we come to life and after that we die being to transformed to other stuff, we dont aim to talk about the begging or the ending of the Pepsi-life process, we aim to the middle , we are shooting at the difficulties the Pepsi passes through its existence (being left on the streets after drinking it) human wise.