Category: And another thing…

An Open Letter to Jose Mourinho: listen for once to the words of Heraclitus.

Dear Jose,

Much has been made of your return to Chelsea, much of it by yourself but you could do well to take notice of the words of the Greek left back, Heraclitus, and patron saint of football who said “δὶς ἐς τὸν αὐτὸν ποταμὸν οὐκ ἂν ἐμβαίης”.

This roughly translates as “No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it’s not the same river and he’s not the same man.”

Jose, he was the first to coin the phrase the beautiful game in Fragments (2001) translated by Brooks Haxton: “Time is a game played beautifully by children” and of course it’s been a huge shame over the last 13 years that you and the rest of your premiership, FIFA and oligarch buddies have distorted that sentiment into the bloated gargantuan that the game now has become.

But as Heraclitus also pointed out, ‘Nothing endures but change‘ so perhaps us fans and commentators are as guilty of trying to step into the same river as you are.

The beautiful game might have been a beautiful oasis back in the 70s when Stuart Hall (of all people) coined the phrase about Manchester City – but since then it’s turned into a river bed, bled dry by the commercial monsters  who’ve polluted the springs from which it flowed.

Not that I wish you ill, Jose, but mid table mediocrity for your team this season would be a fitting destiny for someone who’s trying to step twice into the same river.

Homage to the man who shut the car door behind him.

There was a documentary last night about the Japanese tsunami of 2011. Several people had filmed the event and the programme intercut their footage with interviews from still shocked bystanders and a narrators sober commentary.

There was plenty to sober about: how the power of the water just swept everything aside without any resistance whatsoever – and what it didn’t sweep aside it engulfed; how black the water looked – like oil or  the darkest colour of bile after the worse ever food poisoning; and the guy who got out of his car as the water  quickly rose around him – but who then turned back to shut the car door. In case of what? Theft from passers by? Out of Politeness? Just in case-ness?

It’s amazing how in times of our greatest stress we try to keep hold of sense of decorum and order. When all around us, riots can be breaking out, pestilence can be ravaging the entire population and locusts can be devouring our crops before our eyes – we will still find time to fill the dish washer, take the milk bottles out and shut the door behind us prior to the rest of our world caving in.

God bless you, man who shut your car door seconds before it was swept away in the tsunami of human debris. I hope you made it alive and can live to tell the tale. But just why did you shut the door behind you?

Charlotte Margarette Elisabeth Louise Aitken Née Petri: Rage Against the Dying of the Light

Imagine the scene.  It’s 1930.  The German port of Stettin on the Baltic. The docks once heaving with international trade and traffic have an air of desolation.

You can see the idle grain silos, the cranes waiting in vain like herons for their next catch from the sea, a few tankers float un-easily on the water’s surface next to a dozing war frigate left over from 1918. Breath deeply and you can smell the rancid houses lining the dark damp TB infested streets.

A young German woman, Charlotte, is hurrying down the street, voluminous bag in hand, ill-fitting hat on head.  She has a determined look in her eyes.  She bangs fiercely on a few doors. There’s no answer.  She shouts up at the windows.  She demands someone answer her.

A few children look out from the house windows, a few slither out into the street, followed by a man – their father she presumes – who rushes out, shouting a few words in half Polish, half platt Deutsch at the errant children.

She pleads him but he ignores her, cuffs the children around the head and tries herding them back in doors.  She puts her foot in the door and  doesn’t allow him to shut her out or them back inside. She half hears a woman lustily  singing contralto from the top of the house the Martin Luther hymn, Ein Feste Burg:

A mighty Fortress is our God,
A trusty Shield and Weapon,
He helps us free from every need,
That hath us now o’ertaken.

A neighbour tries to advise her to leave well alone but she ignores him and offers a few choice caustic comments of her own to the neighbour who, distressed at her wilfulness makes his way back up the street, shaking his head. She continues to hammer at the shut door in front of her. Eventually the door opens and 15 children spill out into the street, clambering all over the young woman, looking eagerly up into her  eyes, searching her bag for signs of food, play and  inspiration, pulling her this way and that.

The bag is torn from her grasp and out spills jars of jam, jelly, salad cream and loaves of unappetising bread.  Brown paper bags  of carrots, leeks and lettuces are strewn across the road and trampled by the ravenous young children into the mud.  The children are still not satisfied and hunt deeper into the bag. They remove books, games, hand puppets,  candles, lebkuchen and a toy piano and wave them gleefully above their heads until the young woman loudly reprimands them. They meekly stuff everything back into her battered old bag as she chastises them for being so greedy.

She leads the straggly crowd of children down the street away from the docks to a room at the top of another Baltic hanseatic  house where they meet 50 other children who are packed like eels into a fish crate.

The only difference being these eels are alive and kicking and hungry. Hungry for food, education, god, a kitchen, a church and a family.

And that’s what Charlotte gave them, and that’s what she gave all of us, her family who have gathered here today to give thanks for a life which was marked by devotion,  sacrifice and sheer bloody mindedness.

A few years after this scene in the back streets of Stettin, Charlotte meets  a young gallivanting English architect, Francis Keith Aitken. No-one has recorded the first comment she made when she met him but the chances are it wasn’t too coherent.   She’d hated English at school and had been the worse pupil in the class.

Nevertheless, there’s more to language than just words.  Within two years the couple are married and her street kids give her and Keith a roaring send off at their wedding in Stettin.  They subsequently move to Crieigiau near Cardiff in Wales.

A few miles down the road in Swansea and four years younger than Charlotte Margarette a young Welsh poet, Dylan Thomas,  was growing up with his own brand of energy and indignation.  A good few years later he was to write:

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

One thing you could say about Charlotte Margarette  was that she never went gently into anything: and her last few years bore witness to her energy and spirit which would kick and fight anybody that she felt was getting in her way.

We might have said to her,  you didn’t have to kick so hard.

But she never gets to swap notes with Dylan Thomas  before she and Keith move to London and the  South East where she gives birth to three children,  Veronica Mary in 1936, John Mark in 1938 and William Martin in 1947.

Living in England as a German woman at a time when this nation had declared war on your brothers, sisters and kith and kin could not have been an easy situation to tolerate.  That period of 1939 – 1945 has left its own scars across the continent and no doubt it left them on Charlotte Margarette Elizabeth  as well.  But if they did, they’re not immediately visible.

Her children’s memories are of her singing Schubert’s cradle songs when they wouldn’t go to sleep, walking in the woods in Petts Wood and going to the swings in the local parks: activities she would repeat with her own grandchildren 40 years later.

But she’d given up singing when we wouldn’t go to sleep; she’d be more inclined to stomp upstairs and fiercely instruct us to be quiet – and our walks with her in the fields around Heronsgate were accompanied with Chess the dog, Mickey the dog, Bonzo the dog and any unnamed number of others she’d collect on the way:  much like the Heinz 57 variety mongrel street kids of Stettin, rough and ready to snap at your heels if you got too close.

But back in the 1940s although there is a war going on there is also home-made Blackberry jelly, lettuce, carrots, salad cream, playing in the sandpit with all the children of the cul-de-sac and  Children’s Hour on the wireless. This is  a safe, secure childhood, which despite the war – or is it because of it? – is neither frightening nor threatening.

Ah, the wireless.  That old Bush contraption could only ever half heartedly receive the Home Service and the Light Programme.  A generation later would see it still broadcasting interminable episodes of The Archers at the prompt 1 o’clock lunchtime.  After that we would be ordered upstairs to take our afternoon rest so that she and Keith could retire to their bedroom: to listen to the Archers in peace and quiet, we presumed.

In 1956 Charlotte Margarette Elisabeth Louise  and the family move to Lindens in Heronsgate.  Over the years her mother, brothers and sisters and their families all  visit. August, Eva,  Erika, Thomas, Nick, Friedrich Wilhelm, Monika, Patricia, Petra, Carlos, Peter Macher, Roseann, Tante Heidi,  school friends and far-flung cousins fly into Heronsgate trailing their glamorous clothes, strong perfumes, exotic triangular bars of chocolate for the children and arrive confident, continental and not at all English.

Shining through these visits was her pride for her homeland and conviction that her brothers and sisters were the best in the world and that she could never match up to them, that she was at the bottom of  the list when it came to looks and intelligence.

But for us you were never at the bottom of any list although you might not have believed us had we told you.

Charlotte Margarette Elisabeth Louise’s devotion to home, children and church meant that growing up in Lindens provided many of our formative memories and moments.

But whilst her religion was about love, forgiveness and resurrection you wondered whether there was a sterner old testament prophet who’d be whispering in her ear, telling her not to be so soft and that the one God was a fearsome God indeed who would not flinch from punishing any transgression, real or imagined.  If she wanted to die and God would not let her, then he would punish her with ear ache to stop behaving against the word of the Lord.  Her faith was naive maybe: but none the worst for that.

But in 1993 the Lord summons her Keith for the last time.  She is so distressed she ends up in hospital, kicking and fussing like only she can do, getting out of bed, setting off the fire alarms, phoning the police or wandering half-dressed outside the hospital grounds.

These were sad days. She’d lost her one true partner in life and suddenly  she lost all her bearings.  It was like her past had come full circle and was now suddenly confronting her in the here and now, rather than the there and then.

She’d lost the one voice who could help her negotiate the world rather than barnstorm her way through it and she was never quite the same again.

Charlotte Margarette Elisabeth Louise Aitken. You had a good marriage which lasted a good 60 years and brings us all here today.

The last five years saw you travel to Brazil, sell up Lindens and settle down in Dapplemere Nursing Home where on the 22 January  you finally gave up kicking and blew out like one of your Christmas tree candles.

You were born in Reichenbach in Pomerania in 1910, daughter of August Petri and Auguste Horn.  You grew up in Belgard with your five brothers and sisters – Friedrich Wilhelm, Erika, Lisi, August  and Albrecht.

You married Keith, bore 3 children and 7 grandchildren and at present 7 great-grandchildren, scattered across the globe in  America, Brazil, Wales and England, all in all not a bad haul for a young nurse who went fishing in the back streets of the Port of Stettin.

So perhaps in a world where we’re increasingly advised to stop kicking and to accept our lot,  your persistent energy of resistance is something we might rekindle, celebrate and aspire to when times get tough. As Dylan Thomas might have said…

And you, my Omi, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Testimonial for Charlotte Margarette Elisabeth Louise Aitken Née Petri, February 2000.

The film above is a homage to the staff and residents of Dapplemere Nursing Home in Chorleywood, where Charlotte Margarette Elisabeth Louise Aitken Née Petri spent her last few years.

Richard York Owen: Deal or No Deal?

The last time I saw you was at the retirement home in Stafford. We had gone up stairs to your room to prepare to go out for what you used to call ‘a swift pint’ – although the concepts of ‘swift’ and ‘pint’ were often awkward companions in your sentences and never sat happily together.dad - 18

You had the TV on and we sat and watched “Deal or No Deal” for a bit, the programme in which a hapless contestant is plucked out of obscurity from a group of hopeful contestants and is given 1 of 22 red boxes in which a sum of money is hidden.

He tries to guess what might be in his own box by opening the other contestants boxes, one by one, revealing the money they contain. By a process of elimination he starts to figure out what prize might be left in his box. As the game continues however, he is subjected to the temptations of an off screen ‘banker’ who offers him various ‘deals’ which may be less of more than his potential prize. The contestant’s dilemma is whether to cut his potential losses, accept the deal or reject it with a polite ‘thank you, Mr. Banker, but no deal…’ – and continue his progress in the game, with the hope that he is going to land a bigger prize and beat the banker into the bargain.

You and I sat and watched this for a few minutes and chuckled over the hapless contestant. He’d look at some-one else’s box and then look at his own and we could see him thinking…. Does he have some thing better in his box than I have in mine….? Is the grass greener over there or here in front of me….? On this occasion, he plumps for someone’s else box – and has his hopes dashed when the other player reveals the biggest treasure, a whopping £250,000. This steady drip drip drip of continual disappointment continues through the game until the potentially glorious destiny the contestant was confident about early on in the game is dashed into a thousand pieces. The only box left in the end is his own, complete with an apologetic 10p prize. The other contestants swarm around our 10p victor, all commiserating in what might have been.

What might have been is an epithet for many of this games contestants: what might have been, had this not happened, had that not happened… If only…. If only not…. hindsight, as the contestants on this show will readily tell you, is the ultimate prize in the game of Deal or No Deal.

The prize of hindsight lets us revisit the past and put all the wrongs right and the rights even better. The losses turn into gains and the gains metamorphose into triumphs. Hindsight gifts us 2020 vision, complete knowledge of the state of the turf, the weight of the jockeys and the mood of the horses. Hindsight instils in us the wisdom of knowing where the finishing line is and how far it is from the starting line: hindsight give us magical predictive powers to guarantee the name, colours and pedigree of the 3.45 at Aintree on a wet Saturday April afternoon.

Which is what we set out to do a few years ago at the Grand National, perhaps the time when I saw you at your happiest. Out in the Tattersall Stands, stamping in unison on the wooden floors with the massed ranks of the Irish, French and Scouse bookies who had met up for their annual pilgrimage. Your winnings of perhaps £100 for the day were spent by 10 that evening on Guinness and Chinese takeaways which replenished the predictive powers of your stock of hindsight and which led to the identification of some more dead certs for the following week out on the race courses across the country.

Watching your travels as we grew up meant that places like Aintree, Chepstow, New Market, Haydock and Uttoxeter became mysterious, hallowed lands – part of a cultural landscape through which money seemed to flow freely – albeit too frequently in the wrong direction. Elvis Presley was making a name for himself in that far off country and the land there offered you escape, freedom and the opportunities to open innumerable boxes, all of which were marked with the really big prizes, all of which were too alluring for you to turn down.

Your journeys through that landscape provided us with some puzzling and yet delightful memories: the trips to see Chitty Chitty Bang Bang – 15 times; skating around Brighton ice rink in circles for whole weekends at a stretch: your work as a chef in a Jersey hotel kitchen whilst fending off the mysterious interest in you by Frankie Howard. Treasure hunts on holiday in which prizes of multicolour biros, cross word puzzle books, wind up dogs and Barbie dolls delighted everyone. Your easy, generous desire to entertain all of us led you to organise shows and pantos for many people of all sizes, shapes and ages; your charm and tolerance of others helped bring the best out of them; and your willingness to assist in developing other people’s potential sometimes perhaps dampened your need to fulfil your own.

In recent years the cultural landscape you visited took more diverse and startling turns. Watching your journeys from Stafford to Redditch, Usk, Cheltenham, Bristol, Bath, Sutton Coldfield and Leeds forced us all to look at the places we thought we were familiar with, in new, harsh, uncomfortable lights. Your return to Stafford earlier this year however provided all of us with a sense of relief that you were coming close to something you would call home. We know these were not easy times for you too: but know too that your positive and optimistic outlook carried you through.

In the end, your optimism happily outshone your hindsight: and that was a deal worth winning. In your game of Deal or No Deal, you beat the banker with the best deal of the lot.

Testimonial for Richard York Owen, 30 July 2007

 

How do social networks deal with the death of their users?

It’s weird when you hear out of the blue about friends who have recently died but whose profiles are still on Facebook. Not quite believing your ears, you check out their latest postings and on their timeline they look as lively and as connected and engaged as the last time you saw them. But now their profile looks like a tombstone, albeit surrounded by adverts exhorting our deceased friend to buy a hair transplant.

For all their vitality and here-and-now-ness, Facebook and Twitter and their online cousins don’t deal with the reality of existence fully at all. You exist in the sense that you have a presence but once you exist, there is no undo button which allows you not to exist.

Of course, expecting any social network to step up to the existential plate of what it’s all about Alfie is unfair on the Zuckerberg enthusiasts who have transformed how we interact with friends, enemies and colleagues on line and in real time. The Big Z would be the first to throw his hands up to protest that the purpose of Facebook is nothing to do with questions of what it is to be alive and everything to do with answers of how we fill our time whilst waiting for the delete button to be pressed on our real time profile.

But one of the internal contradictions in Facebook is that the Big Z and his enthusiasts cannot delete you as the only person who can delete you is you – and if you’re not there, then clearly you can’t delete yourself. of course, if you indulge in some real time trolling they can cut you out of their biosphere at the flick of a wrist, but if you continue to live your life in an innocuous and uncontroversial manner, and then are unlucky enough to keel over in the middle of your Chinese takeaway, you end up, as far as Facebook is concerned, in a permanent state of living and not living: also known as purgatory.

Twitter offers even more extreme existential opportunities. You don’t even have to exist at all to have an account on Twitter: you can generate an identity just by following a few commonly available algorithms on applications such as Weavrs.com. And you can end that identity, just as easily, or let it survive ad nauseum, independent of any human agency. Twitter, in that sense, allows for immortality of things independent of you. A bit like God, I guess.

There should probably be a Facebook graveyard where profiles are ceremoniously laid to rest although how they were deal with different faith’s approaches to the funeral arrangements beggars the imagination. One thing we can be certain of is that even in life or death, Facebook will continue to ply us with adverts which try to sell us hair transplants, life insurance or holidays in the Cotswolds. The optimism of the sales force at Facebook never ceases to amaze.

I blame the parents! Why not hitting your grades has nothing to do with you.

Along with childhood obesity, teenage ennui and the English riots of 2011, the failure of all young people this summer not to achieve 100% in all their exam results can all be levelled at the doors of their wayward parents who clearly have not suffered long enough or hard enough in order to get their offspring to meet the highest GCSE grades that our pristine education system prides itself on.

If you haven’t made the grade and have ended up in a university you never wanted to attend in a city you’ve never heard of – don’t worry, it’s clearly your parents fault, the fault of the parents of those poor misguided examiners who set the exams in the first place and ultimately the fault of the current education minister’s parents for producing a human being whose educational mission is driven by important 21st century values of tradition, servitude and deference to the great and the good of the past – and their parents too of course.

Your parents are also no doubt are also suffering from their parents’ wilful mistakes in bringing them up, so it’s no wonder we’re all going to hell in a handcart with no more than 2 grade U’s and a cycling proficiency test between us all.

It’s tough being a parent these days. Not only are you responsible for your offsprings choice of teenage rebellion, you have to bear the brunt of their inability to dress properly, listen to the right music, buy the right newspaper, vote for the right party and do as the media instructs.

This summer though, instead of beating yourself about your parental breast about why your nearest and dearest have failed yet again to find the holy grail of true perfection, why not just set a torch to those newspapers, throw those parent manuals on the funeral pyre of parental disappointments and wave your offspring a cheery farewell as they sail into their freshers week, their gap year or their close encounters of the wierdest kind down at the job centre?

They won’t thank you for it – indeed, they’ll take great delight in blaming you for it when the going gets tough – but you can sleep peacefully knowing you never did your best because of your own parents inabilities to bring you up as an upstanding model citizen.

As Philip Larkin put it:

They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.

But they were fucked up in their turn
By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
And half at one another’s throats.

Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And don’t have any kids yourself.

PASCO: animating communities through the creative industries (Introduction)

The PASCO (Performing Arts Scene in Obrenovac) project has had significant effects on the cultural infrastructure in the Obrenovac municipality since the project started in 2009. Due to generous support both locally, Buskerud County in Norway and the KS funding programme of the Norwegian government, PASCO has had demonstrable economic, cultural and social impact on the region as follows:

Economic impact

* Increased numbers of young people trained in the creative industries;

* Increased mobility of young people and professional practitioners across Europe;

* Increased skills of teachers in the creative industries and performing arts;

* Increased numbers of small businesses and sole traders who are working in the cultural and creative sector;

* Increased use of the facilities at the Obrenovac Culture House and a consequent increase in spending on local facilities such as restaurants, bars and clubs etc;

* Increased funding released from the municipality on culturally related programmes

* Increased funding applications to European funding sources e.g. European Collaboration Fund, Balkans Incentive Fund, Youth in Action

Social impact

* Increased activities which increase self esteem, confidence and sociability of young people attending centres for disabled people in the town;

* Increased social activities for young people both in and out of school;

* Increased interest from other municipalities in the PASCO model from neighbouring municipalities which has led to extension activities with other European partners e.g. in Grocka, Belgrade, Nis and other Serbian towns and cities.

Cultural impact

* Increased learning opportunities for young people and teachers in schools in matters relating to the creative industries e.g. film, performance, project management, fundraising;

* Increased production capacity of films, theatre productions, dance productions and visual arts exhibitions;

* Increased audience numbers at the Culture House.

PASCO has had this impact due to several key factors:

* An economic commitment to the programme by the municipality;

* The willingness by key local organisations to support the programme e.g. schools, cultural organisations, municipality departments;

* A commitment by the Norway and UK partners to sustain the programme over a 3 year period and beyond;

* A flexibility in project delivery which is responsive to local need and requirements.

This and future posts describe how these outcomes were achieved and to assess what contribution the UK partner, the Aspire Trust, made to the project. It also aims to provide recommendations on how future urban regeneration programmes might be designed, the kind of partnership profile required of partners and the knowledges, skills and attitudes that practitioners require in order to effect the kind of changes that have been witnessed within PASCO.

The transformation witnessed in Obrenovac has not however been a one-way street; Aspire itself  benefitted significantly from participating in the programme in the following ways:

* Increased work opportunities for young practitioners working in Aspire to apply their knowledge and skills within a European context;

* Increased mobility professional practitioners across Europe;

* Increased financial turnover of the company, helping to secure its long term future;

* Increased funding from UK based organisations to assist in the long term strategic development of the company across the wider region e.g. Croatia, FYR Macedonia, Bulgaria

* Increased applications to European funding sources e.g. European Collaboration Fund, Balkans Incentive Fund, Youth in Action.

* Increased activities which engage UK practitioners with other practitioners from Serbia, Norway and other European countries, helping to locate their practice within a wider European context;

* Increased cultural partnerships established with other cultural and educational organisations in South East Europe and the Balkans e.g. FYR Macedonia, Bulgaria and Croatia.

* Increased knowledge and understanding of the history and culture of Serbia and the region as a whole.

This and future posts are intended for the benefit of teachers, academics and professional arts workers who wish to learn from the PASCO experience and adapt it for their own purposes.

We hope too that it acts as an inspiration for future graduate students who wish to animate and activate their own communities through the application of the arts and creative industries.

Calling UK young people: want to participate in a Youth In Action funded Street Art project in Luxembourg?

Inter-actions are organising a Youth Democracy project called “Street art” which will give an opportunity to more than 80 young people from 4 countries to have a participative reflection about the place they have in the society through urban cultural active participation. They are urgently looking for 4 UK young people to participate in the programme which runs from 21 June.

The themes will revolve around the role of active participation, empowerment, education, values. Street art forms are different around Europe and may change, but the street art stream goes on and is part and parcel of our all day life and urban space. Politics at any level cannot disregard this aspect that is part of our souranding and with this project we want to bring it to the open discussions.

In “Street art” young people will be able to participate in a complex self-development programme that will provide them with the necessary skills, knowledge and experience to become active social actors and get reflection about the topic. If they will come from the artistic backgrounds- the project will make them aware of civic dimension of their work, influence of their work on urban space and other citizens. It will also make them aware how their creation can be constructive for others and for their future employment. For all participants the project will be a chance to come into the dialogue with politicians on local level- the action that was not in their agenda till now. The project will reveal the sense of the common debate on topics that are important both for youth and for local authorities.

Active young people will take part in one of the 2 international Urban Seminars that will be organized in Luxembourg and in a “Open Art Week” that will organise street art events in several places in the country. It will give them a chance to reflect about street art and exchange their experience and opinions. These 3 events will provide young people with concrete methodology that they will be able to use after the international activity in their home countries with other peers.
Each Urban Seminar will have a particular focus. The first one will be around urban music (dance, singing, beatboxing), the second about visual art (graffiti, light animations, etc). The third event will bring together 40 young people who will organise events around Luxembourg.

During the 3 events young people will debate with decisions-makers, MEPs, deputies, mayors and experts about related topic as well as interact with local groups. The seminars will be organized in cooperation with local authorities and give visibility and content to the event. The discussions during the seminars will be facilitated by young people themselves to give them a chance to experience leading a real participative activity.

This project is organised in the frames of “Youth in Action” programme, and normally all the participants buy their travel tickets on their own and they are reimbursed on place in cash 70% of all the costs.

There is a participation fee of 30 eur that all the participants pay and this fee is reduced from the reimbursement of 70%.

All the other costs – food, accommodation, local transport, program, etc. are covered 100% by the organisation.

The conditions and all simple ones of course, the accommodation is in shared room in a scout centre in Luxembourg, etc.

For more information please contact:
Anna Roganova
Together network
26 place de la gare
L-1616 Luxembourg
Luxembourg

anna.roganova@network-together.eu
00352 621 162 447

Welcoming young volunteers from Europe interested in Arts, Culture and Battleships

Aspire has received accreditation from the European Union to host young volunteers from Europe to come and work with us over the next two years on a range of community arts projects and productions.

The volunteers will take part in the development of a live site-specific performance inspired by and based upon the silent film Battleship Potemkin that Aspire is producing with the director and composer, Patrick Dineen. In particular they will be involved in the creation of a Russian-style choir who will provide the chorus for the performance.

The Trust has recruited two volunteers – Srdjan Grubacki from Zrenjanin in Serbia and Rezeda Muchtarullina from Russia – to take part in the project.

We are thrilled to have been awarded accredited EVS status as it will mean that we will be able to expand our network of cultural projects further across Europe and build on the cultural regeneration work we have been undertaking in the Balkans since 2009.

The EU’s Youth in Action Programme is managed in the UK by the British Council. The Programme helps young people to become active citizens and better equipped for the world of work, promotes solidarity, social cohesion an co-operation within Europe and neighbouring countries.

Head of EU Programmes at the British Council Ruth Sinclair-Jones said: “Youth in Action aims to prepare young people for life and work in our global society.International volunteering helps to build trust and understanding between people in different countries, as well as enabling local communities and organisations to benefit from the volunteers’ work. It broadens young peoples’ horizons and equips them with the skills and understanding they need to become global citizens.”