Superact team member visits European Parliament

Committee members from the Working Group Youth of the European Music Council, including Superact’s Katharine, had the exciting opportunity to visit the European Parliament on the 23rd & 24th November. By invitation of MEP Ivo Belet the WGY were given the exciting opportunity to attend the CULT Committee meeting in the Parliament, which was an opportunity for us to see how the session runs and learn more about ‘Erasmus for All’ and Creative Europe’. The WGY heard first hand Commissioner Vassiliou’s proposal for the new programmes and learn more about what is could be in sight for us all from 2014-2020.

Find out more about the Manifesto for Youth and Music in Europe and join the online endorsement at http://www.emc-imc.org/endorsement/

TEATRAL Project Meeting in Budapest

In October members of the Superact team visited Budapest for the third meeting of the TEATRAL Project which is looking at the use of social theatre in different community settings across Europe.

During the trip the team were met by the hosts KAVA who took them on a visit their national theatre to watch how they use the arts to engage young people.
The learning objective for the young people was looking at roles, identity, freedom of choice and society through the character of a prince who didn’t want to wear the princely garments and challenged the staff on their inability to express themselves freely as they were essentially robots following convention and rules. The Superact team were impressed with the way the themes were addressed and the engagement of the young people.

For more information on the TEATRAL Project please visit the European section of the Superact website or contact staff in the Superact office.

Netbox

The Netbox project aims to use social media as a tool for community development and improved social cohesion. Through the development of a social media tool the project will explore ways in which new technologies can be used to allow communities to share their strengths and resources to enable them to grow as a community. People of all ages will be encouraged to come together and learn how to use new social media technologies.
The project is working with 8 other partners from across Europe. The project consortium believes that it has identified an innovative, multi-faceted model for the development and provision of community based education based on blending the best elements of two diverse tried and tested community development approaches and bringing them to life in bespoke social networking environments.

The focus of this project is:

• to develop and pilot a model micro-social network in coherent rural communities;
• to conduct an audit to identify all the educational assets at individual and institutional levels;
• to identify educational needs;
• to create viable and sustainable online learning partnerships; between individuals through online collaborative learning, peer mentoring and study support groups; between institutions and organisations providing formal and informal education; between businesses, education providers and local residents to identify local educational assets and mobilize them to satisfy local skill needs

LET’S: Focus on Olderpreneurs!

Superact proudly presents this film series on ‘Senior Entrepreneurs’ or ‘Olderpreneurs’: people aged 50+ who have embarked on a new venture, creating their own business. This is part of a EU project with partners from Italy, Germany, Finland, Bulgaria, Poland, Switzerland and Turkey.The aim of these films is to share ten success stories, to challenge preconceived ideas about ageing, and to inspire and motivate many more to follow their passion and launch their own business. In the coming months, these films will be integrated into an ebook: an educational tool for trainers in the field of adult education. So have a look and be inspired!!! Click read more to see the videos.

Superact’s Katharine meets SW MEP Graham Watson

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On Saturday 12th February Katharine met with South West Liberal MEP Graham Watson to discuss Superact’s European Projects and International work.
It was a great opportunity to share the exciting news of Superact’s work in Europe and discuss ways in which Graham can help to spread the word of Superact across Europe.

Personal Effectiveness and Employability Through the Arts (PEETA)

This is a Leonardo Transfer of Innovation Project working with the University of Exeter, PELE, Associacao Social e Cultural (Portugal), T.C. KOCAELİ VALILIGI AB Projeler Koordinasyon Merkezi (Turkey), Edexcel (UK), Dienst Justitiele Inrichtingen/ program MGW (Netherlands), Wiener Vorstadttheater-integratives theatre österreichs (Austria),and Promidea cooperativa sociale (Italy).

Penal systems across the EU and the developed world tend to balance four rationales for imprisonment: deterrence; punishment; the containment of Category A prisoners; and rehabilitation. Within prisons security can be a dominant concern, sometimes detracting from the focus on rehabilitation. A recidivism rate of 58% within two years of release and £11billion cost to the UK tax payer are products of this system (UK Department, BIS, National EQUAL Offender Network, March 2008). In the UK, Government has identified the insidious effect that low skills and worklessness have on offenders seeking to lead crime-free lives (Reducing Re-offending by Skills and Employment - Next Steps, P 6). While job-specific skills can be taught at work, employers increasingly require recruits to demonstrate soft, employability skills required at work (Marchmont, Generic Employability Skills, 2007

Learning Communities and Local Communitarian Projects with Social Theatre Support (TEATRAL)

This is Grundtvig Learning Partnership which is working with partners from Portugal, France, Holland, Romania and Hungary

The objective of this initiative is to train through the artistic experience and give value to theatre, a fundamental tool to build self-development. Thanks to the theatre workshop organized, the participants will be free to explore and choose inside their personal reality. Theatre becomes an active tool of knowledge, of discovering themselves more than the result or the answer to specific techniques. The theatre workshop becomes an experimentation place where they can reach a high degree of awareness, of knowledge of their own limits and potentials inside a group experience (in a context where nobody judges or selects).

The objective of the social theatre is the social and educational inclusion of the participants. The theatre path provides the deepening and the re-elaboration of the real experiences of the participants. We involve in this initiative a particular target group that is represented by people victim of social discrimination and long term unemployed people. Subject and setting are built throughout the workshop according to the experiences of participants. The awareness of problems is the first step to overcoming them. The result will be a moving performance that involves everybody, players and public thanks to the collaboration of an educator, a psychologist and a coordinator to spread this new concerted methodology.

Learning Possibilities in the Penal System (LPPS)

Learning Possibilities in the Penal System is a Grundtvig Learning Partnership project working with partners for France, Germany and Italy.

When it comes to prison education theory and practice in European countries are at different levels of progress. Specially tailored training concepts do not exist. At the best, prison inmates are given the opportunity to gain basic education in crafts and attend language courses and mentoring offered by social workers.
In open prisons additional training offers are considered to be useful, e.g. to support resocialisation. People from different biographical, religious, national, and social origins who see themselves as criminal, non-desired, homeless, cast-away, insane, sick, written-off, and non-sociable often generate symptoms of anxiety and stress, aggression and assaults. Hardly any attention is paid to such learning possibilities, which could open up new resources and perspectives of dealing with severe situations “behind the bars”.

Given the high share of migrants in prisons, intercultural learning becomes a permanent requirement for both inmates and staff. The project LPPS will set off from experiences made by prison managers and other people involved; it will plan, execute, accompany, and evaluate new, among others intercultural, offers for staff and inmates.
The continuous documentation of the pilot offers will serve for the production of a manual designed for the schooling of staff and multipliers. Via this instrument, practice proven learning modules accompanied by help and support for planning, didactic comments, and tips for practice will be made accessible online.

www.lpps.eu

A better ‘Quality of Life’ for people affected by dementia.

As we live longer, the impact of dementia is becoming ever more widely felt across Europe. It is also becoming clear that a multi faceted approach including use of arts intervention techniques, in conjunction with the more traditional medical approach, can benefit those affected.

As a result, a significant award from Grundtvig, European Commission, Brussels has been made to a group of organisations from a number of European countries including the UK, Austria, The Netherlands and Finland for a project called The Quality of Life with Superact! now acting as Lead Co-Ordinator.

For the next two years the target for the project will be to produce support material for artists from all fields working with dementia.

A better ‘Quality of Life’ for people affected by dementia.