Tuesday afternoon saw the Caravan of Dreams rolling up
at the Kunst-Balie venue in Tilburg to join a training session organised by
Sikko Cleveringa of CAL-XL.
As far as we understood some arts centres had been
awarded contracts to use the arts for community development by housing
associations and this was training for the appointed workers. We came in
towards the end of their day to give some insight into our experiences. Each
EMPAF organisation gave a short presentation illustrating how they had tackled
a particular issue through using the arts. Afterwards the training participants
chose one EMPAF presenter to talk with further with the task of coming up with
a mind map at the end.
I was very surprised to learn that some (maybe all?)
had contracts of only one year to undertake their work and wondered about the
expectations of what they might achieve in so short a time. But it was not my
role to ask them questions rather to try and answer theirs.
We had a lively discussion about engaging young people
through on street activities and how you might try to manage the dilemma of
younger children joining in and potentially driving the older ones away.
Talk then turned to working with elders and I had to
admit that this wasn't an area of my work but that I had had my 88 year old mum
living with me for the past 4 years which I was told was a very unusual
phenomenon here in the Netherlands. The
session then continued with much laughter and many questions about my
experience and before we knew it time was up and no mind map had been produced.
The verbal feedback by one of the group focused
primarily on the latter discussion so I hope this was also valuable for them
for their work. I really enjoyed meeting with the group and wish I had had more
time to find out about what they were going to be doing and how. I had been
very impressed with the achievements and dedication of Wikke Peters in a
Eindhoven neighbourhood who had hosted us the previous day and if members of
this group approach their challenges with the same determination as her then
who knows what they will be able to achieve in one year?
Sally, Soft Touch
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