To pilot some of the activities and workshops that have been developed during the training course of the “Shared Spaces” project, 7 young people and youth workers got together at Saline 34, a building that is itself a shared space for various organizations and emergent artists. To start the event, participants were welcomed with a small ice-breaking name game and a presentation of the project.
After, the different phases of the project that occurred were explained to the participants: the research part, with focus groups, interviews and surveys, culminating in the publishing of a national index; the training course, as an international mobility in Sweden with participants from different countries where topics such as migration, diversity, inclusion, needs of people, intercultural communication, problem-solving and active participation in society were discussed through different means of non-formal education. At this point, participants got to better understand that this event referred to the piloting of different workshops and activities that had been explored during the training course.
In the first activity, in a world café style, participants were asked three different questions aimed at exploring their views and opinions on the concepts related to the topic. Participants wrote some ideas for each of these questions and then presented them, further elaborating on them and opening the discussion on the topic. These were:
What is a shared space?
Examples of answers were: “space where people who share similar values can behave, think and talk the way they want without being afraid”; “a space where everyone can be part of”; “co-create rules of the space”.
How to create a space safe?
Examples of answers were: “a space where everyone feels comfortable”; “accessible”; “not impose”; “by organizing different activities and creating a good communication strategy”.
How to empower people to join and co-create community spaces?
Examples of answers were: “listen to the needs of the people”; “reach people at their own spaces”; “word of mouth, online campaigns, reach other organizations”.
Furthermore, participants were asked What kind of activities would you like to join or be in charge of, in a community/shared space? A wide range of answers was given: outdoor cinema & debate; Karaoke; activities about exploring nature; communication studies; art & music events; tattoo studio; cooking events; intercultural events with the presentation of different countries + quiz; artistic and creative workshops with collage, drawing and embroidery; and an info point about Germany best tips.
Faced with a diversity of opinions and needs regarding the topic of shared spaces and with the question of how to integrate them into a common space, the second activity focused on introducing Maslow’s pyramid as a tool to identify needs. Maslow’s pyramid is a stratified pyramid demonstrating the needs of human beings in which each level can only be attended to if the needs at the immediate level are suppressed beforehand. The bottom level refers to basic needs (ex. food, water, warmth, rest); the second level refers to safety needs (ex. security, shelter); the third level refers to belongingness and love (ex. intimate relationships and friends); the fourth level refers to esteem (ex. prestige and feeling of accomplishment); and the fifth level refers to self-actualization (ex. achieving one’s full potential, including creative activities).
After explaining this theoretical model to the participants, they were asked to fulfill their pyramid of needs, as groups of three, based on a question: What would you need to feel safe and brave in a space? Furthermore, as a shared space is also about compromise and finding common ground, the groups were then asked to get together into a big group and re-write the pyramid with only one need at each level. There were the interesting results:
Finally, based on the identified needs, participants were asked to envision how a space should look like to answer these. For that, participants created a joint collage that could serve as visual representation of the findings developed through this day’s event. Here is the result:
This project (Pr. Nr.: 2023-1-SE02-KA210- YOU-000160073) is funded by the European Union through the Erasmus+ program. Its consortium is assembled by Culture Goes Europe e.V. from Germany, Goodness of People from Sweden, Logos from Poland, and Fedelatina from Spain.
