Posted: 15th June 2022
Telling Stories Together for Change: Transnational Workshop in Athens
Our second transnational workshop was hosted by Inter Alia in Athens in May 2022, bringing together young people and youth workers from across Europe. Our aim was to empower young people through storytelling and Futures Literacy at the level of the community. Participants developed key competencies on how to better frame and share their personal stories, thinking about how their stories connect with those of others. They used their bodies, their voices, and their hearts.
To get to know each other, we began by walking together while discussing a very familiar subject – food! Food involves many different things. It involves production processes, methods, cultural traditions of food making and sharing, specific food interests, and stories shared while eating. We shared stories about food, in our daily lives and on special occasions, on our way to our first time eating together – a process that itself is ideal for loosening up and talking to other people. Friends from our previous workshop in Seville reconnected, and new friendships began!
The next day began with an energetic name game inspired by a colleague from Senegal. It pushed participants to go out of their comfort zones and invited the whole group to recognise each member. We continued with one-to-one sharing using questions that try to bring up stories from our past and present, involving the places, natural environments, and human relations we have been experiencing. The aim was to try to consider and answer questions about things that we normally do not speak about, to look a bit deeper into ourselves and our stories.
Storytelling for change
Later sessions focused on bringing together our minds, bodies, and hearts, and learning how storytelling can engender change at a personal and communal level. A series of body activities were designed to practice unlearning, be present, and take control of embodied experiences. Then, participants were asked to recall a story that was important to them and somehow had made an impact in their lives. With the support of the facilitators, they introduce different elements to their stories, reinventing and sharing with noises, strong words, body movements, and experiments with structure. They evaluated each other and identified key aspects that could be used to express their story, learning to know themselves and each other better and to present their stories with impact.
Exploring city stories, building collective stories
The next day was dedicated to bringing individual stories together after being affected by common experiences, a socio-cultural exploration of the city of Athens. Participants were given an indicative list of sites in the city with social, ecological, political, and cultural value, and invited to explore the city and discover new spots themselves.
They walked the city, taking pictures and videos of themselves and what they saw, and create a collective mapping. At the end of the day, their task was to put together the digital materials and create video stories with their experiences. Each group collaborated and experimented with different video techniques and digital tools. They were very excited by the process, the feeling of freedom to explore and to create something from scratch, their collective story.
My future possibilities, our common future
They say that all good things come to an end, but the process experienced in this project and training courses opens new spaces for dialogue, interaction and reflection. Moving from something very personal to collective creates new potentialities for the future. This was the focus of our final day, when participants were asked to think about one change they would like to make in their lives, and the challenges they might face. Deep questions about the nature of autonomy and the role of collective experience emerged, as the process was designed to question what we know, allow ourselves to be more open to the unknown, and find ways to become more empowered to reclaim new future possibilities and new meanings to what is considered “a good life”.
Our week closed with an open event held at the Goethe Institute, where participants took the stage to talk about what ‘community’ and ‘a good life’ meant to them, and to introduce their short films. Finally Stratis Vogiatzis from the Caravan Project made an inspiring presentation about the importance of storytelling and how stories speak to other stories and form new realities. It is within the stories we experience and the stories we share that we give new meanings and open ourselves to new futures, in common.