Story Time
Connecting People with the Power of Art (2016-2018)
Project Number: 579292-CREA-1-2016-1-HR-CULT-REFU
We build our worlds through stories. We need narratives to make sense of the world, we even weave the multitude of our own experiences into a story about who we are and our place in the world. Stories, legends and fairy tales form our moral framework and teach us the rules of coexistence. Stories we heard as children are deeply engraved in our subconscious and influence how we think, act and dream. Stories, literature - through good literature we are also better able to put ourselves in the shoes of our fellow human beings. And stories that we heard as children allowed us to understand for the first time what others feel, how they think, how they are motivated.
The main objectives of this project are:
1. promoting access to the culture of refugees and imparting knowledge about these cultures in the host society, especially for children and young people, through stories from the countries of origin of refugees.
2. supporting refugee children in gaining access to European culture through European children's stories published in Arabic and in the language of the host countries.
3. promoting the integration of refugees and confronting the fear of the "other" through the participation of children and young people in joint workshops and events that take place in public spaces.
4. to create new works of art that arise from the dialogue between artists from different cultures and present new interpretations of traditional motifs and to question our values in the light of current events (migration).
Bringing together 5 organisations from Germany, Croatia, Austria, Slovenia with different experiences, working in different fields of art and education and all very competent in their fields, provides an excellent opportunity to create innovative content, to bring art into different aspects of education and to consider education in art making - all together to support the integration of migrants into host societies and to create a more open society ready to accept new cultures as part of Europe.
The exhibition "On the Way":
Story Time emphasises the importance of knowledge about the cultural histories of different nations and milieus, because it is precisely this knowledge that is the first common point on the way to understanding other cultures. The artists, Nika Autor (Slovenia), Vesna Bukovec (Slovenia), Nadine Kaadan (Syria), Jalal Maghout (Syria), Jure Markota (Slovenia), Skart (Serbia), reinterpret cultural histories and cultural contexts from the European and Arab world. They thematise questions of humanity, peace, war, good and evil and at the same time question the role of the individual and thus also the responsibility of the individual towards fellow human beings.
