The end of an adventure… the beginning of a new one

Two weeks have already past since I left Slovenia. It feels strange. I didn’t expect the departure will be so emotional. Now I think about it, it had lots of similarities with the arrival: huge confusion, excitement, regular cries, nostalgic moments, stress of the unknown, the feeling of being lost…

I think this end of mission was even harder because we had such an intense month filled with exalting projects and conclusion events that the moment to say goodbye arrived abruptly. I guess it would have been easier in the end of November, when we were less busy and super nostalgic of our countries and relatives. On the other hand, it would not have been the same feeling of accomplishment.

The biggest element of this last month was a big challenge, that I accepted without really knowing what I was entering in. The point was to have a Theatre performance about Calais Calais, a diary written by a German activist, relating her traumatic experience in the french refugee camp of the same name. Reading the text was the first tough step: realising the precarious reality of thousands of refugees located only few hours from my hometown, plus the anger of local fascist was for me a huge slap. With Tomaž and Sofia, we had less than a month to prepare the performance, that will be shown in GT22, a cultural centre that had some expectations. This thing will be real and we had nothing. Big panic.But since nothing good comes from panic, we tried to overcome it, and came up with ideas, that we found surprisingly quite good. We decided to illustrate this diary through diverse forms of theatre : frozen images, dance, puppets, shadows… and for this we’ve been rehearsing almost everyday, jumping from emotional sessions to unstoppable laugh that become necessaries under pressure. One week before the D-Day, I yielded to panic : What was I doing here ? I had never acted before, how will I remember all the text without screwing up everything ? Luckily, , Sofia had the right words : whatever what we will do, we’re not doing it for others, but for us, to honor the text, and if it is sincere, it can’t be really bad. Once again, the meaning of her name was correct.

On the day of the performance, I felt something never felt before, a sensation of emptiness in my head, that I can’t remember any of my text. And we learn that the national TV is here to interview us, as if the pressure wasn’t already to high... But we had no choice, the audience was there, we just had to jump in. I tried not to look at the audience, we gave everything we had, It actually went all right ! After the performance, we had lots of positive feedback and it felt good to see that some people got really affected, even cried, because they got the message and found our illustration immerse and powerful. Apparently, we broke the record of audience, with 70 spectators for 40 seats. We even talked about having it again in Greece and France. A huge challenge indeed, but I think successfully accepted !

After this major event, some other followed, including the finale exhibition of my students of the Alternative Drawing class. It was a good reflect of the sessions : improvised and spontaneous ! Drawings were hanged on some strings, as drying laundries surrounded by candles. Very few people came, but we didn’t care : the student were so proud of having their work exhibited ! And the greatest thing is that they want to keep going with meeting weekly and drawing together : goal achieved ! Same thing for the open stage : it feels great to see that something you started will go on, maybe because it made some people happy.

So here I am now, in France, trying to figure out what happened, realising how things and people changed here but especially how I changed during this year. Not sure at all about what I want for this year, of what I want my future to be, but sure of what I don’t want in my life. And as new year’s resolution, I only want to keep everything I learnt this year in my mind : keep cool, listen to yourself, fight for who you are and what you believe, and experiences are much more important than material things. First time of my life I don’t know exactly how this helf-year will be, the schedule is blank, but I’m not afraid, I’m sure some cultural project will come, some foreigner friends, activist actions, and some other surprises will cross my way...

Colin

Hatespeech and CyberBullying workshop

One month ago Sofia and I had a workshop made for international high school students. Since we attempted a youth training about Human rights and hate speech few month ago, we decided to orientate the workshop on this field, and focused it into cyberbullying, a concerning topic for their generation. 

We used the Compas method to prepare some activities, and made a little presentation about human rights in general. When the day arrived, we were quite surprised by the age of the students, we thought we will face some young teenagers and they were actually young adults of 18 years old, expressing themselves in a better english than I do… The great thing was that they opened quite easily, participated actively to the activities and seemed comfortable.

Coline

Time for Personal Projects

Only two months left in Maribor. If on one hand, eleven month in a small town can seem quite long when you come from a bigger one, but on the other hand times flies, especially now that days are becoming shorter and shorter. Since September, it was time for me to start my personals projects. I focused on my passions: music and art, and tried to create some events from it. That’s how the Alternative Drawing Class was born, and it has been running since more than one month. The concept is simple: with or without graphical skills, the participants will go somewhere (nature, cafe, city…) and discover a new drawing practice. Painting by the emptiness, by the shadows, with opposite colours… If some attendants are willing to learn the basics (perspective, volume…), some are already very experienced and then my mission is mostly to open their mind, show them that there is not only one “good way of drawing”.  I invite them to challenge themselves, make some mistakes, and of course have fun with drawing ! It is always a pleasure for me to have this class, I learn improvisation in teaching, adaptation to the level (and the weather !), and it feels great when at the end of a session, the participants actually prefer the last “alternative” drawing rather than the one they naturally drew !

I wasn’t expecting that facilitating would fulfill me that much. I also started some French classes few weeks ago, and even if it doesn’t look so professional because of my lacking of knowledges grammatically talking, I really enjoy preparing the lessons and having them! A new path to explore for the future?

Another Project getting bigger and bigger is the Open Stage / Jam Session that I’ve been organizing for the third time : every two weeks, musicians, singer and audience can share a unique experience of improvised music. Depending of the combination of instruments, the style and the tempo decided, everything can change, but the vibes are always nice! It is great to see some old guys that were part of bands in their young age, so happy of playing with others! And it makes me happy as well : I was really missing playing with others, so this occasion is perfect. If it is not so easy to connect with Slovene people, music gives me this opportunity, through a more creative way!

Coline

Creativity out-of-the-box

In the beginning of the month I had the chance to participate in an Youth Exchange titled “We are all equal in creativity” which brought together 30 different young people from 6 European countries. Aim of the project was, through creative methods – such as theater, storytelling, and creative writing – to gain useful skills that we could later use in our work with discriminated groups, as means towards social integration and empowerment.

As part of the project, we also had the opportunity to meet with some people, currently asylum seekers in the area of Faenza in Italy and share with them some thoughts on integration.

Even if the project was quite more loose than I expected and despite the fact that we didn’t dig into creative writing as much as I hoped for, this type of gatherings always leave you some space for personal reflection and interpretation and always something comes out, even if at first glance some things may seem a bit pointless or excessive.

So, what did I get? After an engaging discussion on searching for possible solutions to the refugee situation, going through inner personal stages – from desperation of not being able to find any possible solution to numbness and incapability – I realized that yes, sometimes the bigger image seems already broken and unrepairable, but also wasting your individual possibility of contribution does not make things better. So of course our personal interactions and behavior in our microcosm may have nothing to do with the monsters crawling further away, but probably it is a step towards something, it is something concrete not just a discussion, a recommendation, a proposal.

But also this project left another bitter taste in the end; these people, these “asylum seekers” as everyone now wants to label them, giving them an impersonal and cold identity connected to their life situation have so many new things to fight for in this European environment. It is not just about making friends and finding a job, as our possible needs would be as European citizens migrating into another EU country. Their need is bigger and greater: it is a call for respect and understanding, a vital need that we tend to neglect. For some it can be easy to attain for others maybe not so undeniable.

So yes, in this cases you should think out of our microcosm, out of our little box of life, fears and expectations. 

In any case, I had some unexpected acquaintances, talked a lot, contemplated and collaborated with so many different people that I probably would not have the chance to do in any other case.

Sofia

An adventurous Road Trip in the Balkans

As usual, time passed so fast that I didn’t realised summer had already come to its end.
These two last months have been punctuated by music festival, theatre of the Oppressed workshop, movie projections and of course Lent festival, an intense moment in Maribor City. I also enjoyed some free days to say hello to France, passing from town to town to make sure I won’t miss anyone.
But mostly, August will stay in my memories as the month I had my first backpacking / hitchhiking road trip. We were having this project in mind with Sofia for a long time now, since we arrived in Slovenia; in August, we will discover the Balkans… But the more time was passing, the less we were planning and when it was time to go, here was the final plan: we would have 12 days to visit 4 countries, and we would try to hitchhike as much as possible. We only had accommodation planned for 3 nights, but that was it, and we weren’t actually worried about it; we knew it would be challenging, but that we would manage to find a solution every D-Day.

Let the adventure begin!

We first went to Croatia, visited few towns and Krk island, then saw most of the coast thanks to an amazing Croatian guy that took us all the way down to Split, passing by all the little villages and explaining each of their stories.

We passed the border and arrived in Bosnia: after a stop in Mostar and its old bridge overhanging the transparent river, we arrived in Sarajevo. There I had a big surprise: first by the importance of Muslim religion and oriental atmosphere and secondly by the omnipresence of the war. For us, we could not feel this Capital without understanding its history, that’s why we decided to go for two free tours about history and war, completed by the war museum. The guide, which was a kid during the siege, explained what happened with a personal perspective, and took us to the crucial places, were we could understand the reality of Bosniaks at this time. We were staying in a really tiny hostel, which allowed us to create quick connections, and that’s how we met plenty of people from all parts of the world. It was amazing to see how even if we were coming from different backgrounds, culture and identity, we were all connected by this spirit of adventure and discovery.

We liked the town so much that we decided to stay one more day, and found some Italian companions that were also going to Montenegro the next day. We jumped in their car, compressed between backpacks and guitar, and during several days we had great laugh and saw great landscape.

After Kotor and Budva, we went to have a look in Podgorica, the capital, were an old British grandpa was waiting for us as our Couchsurfing host. It was funny to see that he actually had more energy that we did ! We took the night train (what an experience! #thisisBalkans) to Belgrade, were we met Milos, the resident artist which we collaborated with in Maribor. Belgrade is a nice, lively city, but it was time for us to come back to our little Maribor. We hitchhiked one last time, and finished our adventures in a wonderful Croatian sunset.

This way of travelling pushed me to trust my instinct, taught me to be in a “whatever mood”, asking people to camp in their garden, take us with them on their road without thinking about their opinion of us. Life is short, and without trying we would not get what life has to offer us. To wake up every morning without knowing where you will fall asleep at night can seem risky or worrying for some people, but I took it as a big shot of adrenaline. Thanks to these people that agreed on sharing their journey with us for one hour, one day or even more, we had the kind of trip we wanted: going with the flow and enjoying every part of the adventure.

Coline