Europejski Dom Spotkań - Fundacja Nowy Staw

YEAR 2009 NEWS

05.04.2009. Lublin Looking for a dialogue. European Meeting Centre - Nowy Staw Foundation

The 5th of April was the last day for the youth exchange in Nasutów and Lublin in which youth from Münster (Germany), Luck (Ukraine) and lubelskie region took part.

The project “Common past, common future: looking for a dialogue”, which was held from March 29th and April 5th, facilitated getting to know culture and history of our neighbours and was a platform for looking for a dialogue in discussion on historic, political and other important topics for all of three nations. Discussion and simulation workshops were a followed by numerous integration workshops and language animation. Among others the participants were considering in pro-contra debate (the Oxford debate), whether the EU should still enlarge, and within frames of history workshops they tried to tackle different aspects of history narratives present in their countries. Another important point of project activities was workshop on stereotypes: what are these and how to break them?

Every national group presented their traditions and local customs by means of games, songs and dances and showed a movie. The Polish group chose “Interrogation” directed by Ryszard Bugajski with leading actress Krystyna Janda- a film telling a story of repressions of Stalin-era in communist Poland. Wolfgang Becker’s „Goodbye Lenin” on changes of the period of the Berlin Wall Fall in East Germany was brought by German group. Ukrainian youth chose a cartoon movie of Eduard Nazarov “There once was a dog” based on a Ukrainian old folk tale.

The young people visited also the former concentration camp of Majdanek and took part in two human rights workshops on topics of historic context of human rights development and their hierarchy as well as on case study on conflict between right to life and property within frames of a game which simulated authentic court trial. These two workshops were prepared by Przemyslaw Iwanek within frames of his Action Plan project inspired by Humanity in Action.

An important part of the activities was also a documentation of tracks of Ukrainian and German culture in Lublin which are part of the multicultural past of the city. The results of this work were publicly presented in “a moving exhibition”, which appeared on the streets of Lublin on April 2nd. It is also planned to create a permanent exhibition of which details will be soon revealed.