Culture for empowerment

Provide short introduction here

General introduction to approach

The cluster is about the empowerment of young / disadvantaged people through different culture-based solutions. It consists of three different approaches:

Co-designing hip hop and rap compositions:

The project called ‘Educational Demos’ is focused on the elaboration of rap and hip hop compositions related to the defense of human rights. The approach helps to facilitate empowerment and build trust between young people and society and is a way to deal with their daily concerns. The project is supervised by different social workers.

Theathre of the Oppressed:

The theatre is providing young people from deprived neighbourhoods who are facing problems with tools that help them to talk about them and analyse them. It is a participatory theatre that becomes an alternative way of learning values, and a medium which allows for the exchange of experiences and the dissemination of ideas, facilitate contact between young people in an environment different from school and family. It enables young people to express their needs and concerns, the nourishment of critical thinking, encouragement of active political participation and citizenship.

Upcycling refugee initiative:

The initiative is part of the Refugee ScArt project and consists of a laboratory where recycling, social inclusion and economic support for refugees are tightly connected. Refugees gather plastic/garbage from the streets and create art/useful products with it. The approach/project is not funded by any EU project.

Shapes, sizes and applications

The Theatre of the Oppressed and Co-designing hip-hop and rap music approaches have been existing since over ten years. The Refugee ScArt project exists since 2011. The approaches are a way to express themselves (or earn a bit of money in the refugee case) but will not completely solve problems that youngsters face in school/in their family/economic problems. Youth workers also always have to be clear about the projects being an educational experience (as in Theatre of the Oppressed and hip-hop) and not about fame. To cite a hip-hop approach youth worker: “What this project gives is expressivity, culture, knowledge about what is happening in your environment. This is the most important thing it must be highlighted, it is a resource, a tool to build a critical society, to create critical young people and they make it through music, but they could be doing it through video, theatre, etc” (p.15)

All projects seem to be widely transferable to marginalized communities in other cities (as long as the respective forms or art (theatre/ hip-hop) are appreciated there.

Relation to UrbanA themes: Cities, sustainability, and justice

Connection to Cities

Strong urban connection: The cluster is about urban areas. Two out of the three projects where in the neighbourhood of El Raval in Barcelona. The approaches in general seem applicable to all kinds of urban areas (neighbourhood level/city level) and could work in rural areas as well, if there are similarly disadvantaged groups of people who can physically and socially connect.

Connection to justice

Very strong justice connection: The idea of all approaches is the empowerment of people. E.g aims of the theatre approach are (p.2): ”The empowerment of young people, raising awareness of social issues and of values such as equal opportunity, interculturality, nondiscrimination and the promotion of an active citizenship.” The cluster therefore focuses on “recognition justice” as it is about responding to the needs, identities, and preferences of socially vulnerable users (refugees, excluded young people) in deprived urban neighbourhoods. In the CITISPYCE project (which researched the Educational Demo and Theatre approach), a thorough analysis of “causes” and “symptoms” of inequalities was conducted, on national, city and neighborhood level, finding ambivalent relationships between causes and symptoms.

Connection to sustainability

Very weak sustainability connection: Not at all about sustainability apart from the refugee project/approach which is a way of upcycling garbage.

Linking sustainability and justice

No linkage in the theatre and demo tape approach. Only the refugee approach connects both dimensions, as the picking up of trash shall give disadvantaged people a chance to earn money/ emerge from isolation

Narrative of change

More and more (young) people are feeling disconnected from society, because of different drivers and symptoms of inequality that affect young people differently in each country (e.g economical inequailities in the labour market and in access to usable welfare and education provision, ethnic issues, gender issues). Arts and culture are a way to include all groups of society and are a means to express yourself. Providing young/disadvantaged people with self-confidence is understood as a key point of departure to grow as adults and human beings (as mentioned e.g. in Educational Demo approach).

Transformative potential

All of the three approaches provide participants a sense of belonging, a sense of being needed and a more or less stable social environment where they can be themselves without any judgements. This can hopefully strengthen their capacity to question and (collectively) alter power relations. Yet this is only a very indirect, uncertain effect and difficult to measure. Such opportunities may also make the situation more comfortable for some parts of the marginalized groups and hence reduce the likeliness of more fundamental change.

The research project that studied the Barcelona case studies (CITYSPYCE) problematises power relations between the youth and policy makers in general and mentions several times that young people should not be perceived as a problem to be fixed, but should be perceived as a potential for providing more effective and efficient social support in post-crisis Europe. One could also argue that the approaches indirectly challenge the “youth as a problem” perception as well through showing what young people are capable of if they are in an environment where they feel respected/as equals.