Shared Stories from European Schoolyards / Youth Encounter in Tallinn
‘Shared Stories from Schoolyards’ (Tallinn, Estonia, October 2010) was a youth exchange project hosted by VAT Theatre, Tallinn and financed by the Estonian Youth for Europe Agency. It was the first Youth Encounter initiated in the framework of Platform 11+ under the topic ‘Schoolyard Crossers’.
About 40 young people from schools from four European countries (Estonia, United, Kingdom, Slovakia and Czech Republic) met and worked together in artistic mediums for eight days to exchange stories and experiences. All schools are locally connected to cultural institutions. These contacts helped them to establish and prepare this exchange project. Every group had prepared short presentations which they shared in order to start discussions on cultural identity and differences, issues they care about, and the stories they might want to tell about the Europe they live in. Using different methods in the performing and visual arts, facilitated by a team of international specialists led by Siret Paju (EE) and Arjunan Manuelpillai (UK) the young people worked towards finding an artistic expression of their thoughts and feelings in a collaborative and social way. Beside very impressive moments in getting in touch with the Estonian culture and tradition, the climax of this week was undoubtedly the performance „Handbook of my Life“ which was shown in the National Estonian Library.
Please follow the develpoment of our first Schoolyard in Town Youth Encounter on the blog: Tallin2010
