History Atlas Under Construction
New international theater project involving migrants, refugees and senior citizens in Antwerp, Bologna, Paris and Warsaw, initiated by Strefa Wolnosłowa Foundation from Poland, supported by Evens Foundation and Europe for Citizens Program.
The reflection from the transgenerational and transcultural perspective by collection of the individual memories and stories that build our history is going to become a starting point for the research about the construction of history and memory in todays Europe. How to find the balance between the European and non-european knowledge? How to talk about history and memory of Europe in todays multicultural societies? How to exchange knowledge and skills between generations and how to get the inspirations not only from the European but also from the non-European experiences of dealing with the past and history? What migrants living in Europe and todays European citizens from the second and third migrant generation study during their history lessons at school and how this knowledge is confronted with the knowledge of their land of origin, authority of their parents and grandpartents? Does our collective history is being redefined taking into consideration the presence of the new citizens with the non-european background? What are the ways to deal with the diversity of histories of the new European citizens to build a common European future? The project will try to answer these questions by the research and artistic work on the individual biographies of European citizens, young and senior migrants and Europeans with the non European family roots,so of direct and indirect testimonies of the historical events of the years of formation of the European Union after the II World War and of the chosen crucial historical moments.
The project starts with the creation of the local transgenerational groups of youth and seniors with the European and non-European family roots. The partner organizations involved (Strefa WolnoSłowa, Cantieri Meticci, Check Points, KunstZ) are the organizations that run the artistic acrivities involving non-professionals of different age and cultural backgrounds in the artistic activities every year. For the project purposes every partner organization creates a project group that will dedicate their annual work to the themes of the History Atlas Under Construction. The workshop groups in every city will work through art, especially theater, methods on the collection of the stories. The materials collected and focused on the personal memories and significant moments in the individual biographies connected to the collective European history are going to become a base for the international artistic work with the workshop groups of non professionals – migrants and European citizens – youth and seniors. The international artistic residences in every city will involve these transgenerational groups as well as other participants in the creative work aiming in the creation of the History Atlas Under Construction – an on-line interactive platform built by the plurality of images, voices, stories. The Atlas-collage will tell the history of Europe after the II World War from the points of view of Europeans and new citizens and will use an interdisciplinary methods combining stories and their artistic elaborations created by the participants of the transnational workshops leaded by artists and cultural animators from different artistic fields. The efects of our work will be presented on a festival at the end of June 2016 in Warsaw.
Follow project activities here
The project is coordinated by Strefa WolnoSłowa Foundation from Warsaw and run in collaboration with:
kunstZ (Antwerp)
Cantieri Meticci (Bologna)
Cie Check Points (Paris)
Teatr Powszechny (Warsaw)
Università di Bologna
Institute of Literary Research (Warsaw)
Supported by the European Comission – Europe for Citizens Program.