PolskaLAB
This project, implemented together with the Association of Creative Initiatives ę, provides educational activities for young people that would combine social issues and the new media in interdisciplinary work. Our aim is to build a community around the designed ideas and to make use of them in the activities of other organizations, bring the project beyond Warsaw and to offer it to “medium-sized cities” and share our method with other practitioners of media education in Europe.
For the last 14 years the Association of Creative Initiatives ę has cared for sharing our methods and tools of work with big cities and small and medium-sized towns and villages across the country. Research shows that he medium-sized towns experience rapid development, but on the other hand they are neglected and underfinanced in national cultural programs. That is why the most natural and needed step would be to develop Wawa Lab on a national level, with a special focus on those towns.
There is a number of systematic projects focused on the development of villages and the people of big cities receive many internal and external stimuli for development. But medium-sized towns seem to be left out of many important development processes and educational programs. The field of culture is a great example of this phenomenon. There are big programs run by the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage for cultural institutions in rural areas and in small towns (such as Dom Kultury +). On the other side – in big cities – we can see the effects of the competition between several cities to become the European Capital of Culture 2016 (new initiatives, bigger cultural budgets); young people flow into big cities and with them initiatives are born and culture gains momentum. Medium-sized towns remain a niche when it comes to development initiatives for culture and activities aimed at strengthening social potential and cultural capital.
Goals of the project:
- exporting the model of the City Laboratory worked out during Waszawa Lab to the national level
- supporting media education in secondary schools in medium-sized towns in Poland
- supporting local educators: animators, cultural institution employees, teachers in implementing media education into the teaching process
- supporting the creation of local interdisciplinary partnerships that bring together cultural institutions, NGOs, local activists, experts in the field of the new media and technologies as well as young people.
In 2 medium-sized towns in Poland we will conduct a series of media education activities for the local youth. They will make use of new media and new technologies to design and run social projects. The activities will take form of intensive a week-long media workshops (summer and winter). The young participants (approx. 25 – each town) will collaborate with local activists and experts in the field of media education to create and implement innovative solutions/tools/products that combine the tools of new media with urban issues.
In order to ensure durability of these solutions we want to launch real collaboration with local organisations. In the first stage the organisation will define the fields of their interest related to social engagement in the city, for which young people could design solutions, e.g. urban space friendly for senior citizens, immigrants in the city etc. After a week-long intensive workshops the organisations will be able to use the solutions/tools/products in their regular activities. We will support organisations and young people in finding ideas for the ways those tools/solutions can be used in their programs and activities.
As result, the young participants will acquire experience both in the use of new media and social participation activities. What’s important, they will create actual solutions that will get the chance to work in the future.
We will create a website with a digital map of Poland, where we will publish the effects of the participants’ work: audio-visual materials and blogs created by the participants and local educators. A video tutorial will be made in each town – it will present the conducted activities and their effects.
We will prepare and publish another (after Warszawa Lab) broader manual for Urban Media Education. We will present media and social effects of the activities and share scenarios of activities and ready solutions.
Stay tuned for the news!
More info here: http://polskalab.e.org.pl