Peer education
Marres develops many programmes with young people. These programmes are based on peer education, with pupils and students (led by art professionals and art teachers) initiating projects and sharing them with their peers. Marres offers an inspiring environment, professional guidance, and a safe setting in which young people can experiment freely.
An example of a peer education project is ‘Eye-I’, created during six Saturdays of intensive collaboration between 25 young people from different countries. The group includes young people from United World College, Stichting De Vrolijkheid foundation (part of the asylum seekers’ centre in Heerlen), and a number of mainstream secondary schools. The young people who took part in the project could share stories with each other about their different cultural backgrounds, taking inspiration from the exhibition The Floor is Lava. You can listen to the stories on the Eye-I page. Click on an eye to listen to a story.
Eye-I is an online platform developed by young people from various secondary schools and the asylum seekers’ centre in Heerlen under the guidance of Marres Educatie. Eye-I is based on sharing culture and identity, both online and offline, in the form of image and sound.
As part of ‘Nederland 75 Jaar Bevrijd’ (75 years of liberation), Marres encourages young people to share their media fragments about culture and identity and help to grow Eye-I.
The accompanying workshop focuses on several key questions:
What is freedom and which culture promotes freedom? Why is freedom essential to becoming who you want to be or to being who you already are? How well do you know your classmates?
Young people then investigate everyday human behaviour and objects that are characteristic of a particular culture or identity. They can make a video or an image of it or share their thoughts as an audio clip, in order to depict or narrate the abstract concept of freedom.
All the images and fragments can then be found here on the Eye-I platform.
Eye-I is part of a ‘Training the Senses’ programme for young people. Marres is looking to use this project to form a bridge between cultural and artistic education, humans and society, and media literacy (subjects taught at Dutch schools).
Participants:
Ahmed, Carina, Christin, Elle, Elya, Fams, Giulia, Hope, Kelly, Leslie, Mayren, Mohammed, Mohammad, Muntadher, Ousman, Popcan, Sterre, Synne, Tesnim, and Thea
Artists:
Dagmar van Wersch (performance)
Hanneke van Dongen (photography)
Manuel Calapez (web development)
Coordinators:
Ilse van Lieshout (Marres)
Moos Pozzo (Stichting De Vrolijkheid)
Afsoun (Stichting De Vrolijkheid)
This project is made possible with the support of:
Stichting Kannunik Salden, de St. Clemensstichting en het Fonds voor Cultuurparticipatie / Jij maakt het mee.
