WHICH MUSIC IS PLAYING ON YOUR STEREOTYPE

Erasmus +Â Training course on discrimination and inclusion processes Berlin, Germany 10-17.06.2017

Introduction

Day 1/Beer & GT

With the project "What music is playing on your stereotype" we would like to equip youth workers from different countries (Germany, Morocco, Egypt, Georgia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Macedonia and Estonia) and backgrounds with competencies to work actively on combating discrimination by Human Rights Education, and to be active in inclusion processes by creative activism, especially online.

«Cold», «Strict», «Conservative»...

These are the first words that come to mind when one thinks about Germans.

Each people have similar stereotypes associated with them – and these are just the mild ones.

We are coming from different countries, bringing along different preconceptions about our host country, and aware that it has ideas about us.

Some of them are more accurate than others, some are even funny or goodnatured, but they can cloud our perceptions unless we are conscious about them.

Our aim is to deliver a top quality training to 30 youth workers on Human Rights Education, to explore different cases of discrimination and to exchange good practices for inclusion, especially of migrants and refugees.

We would also like to create visual material for online activism, based on the participants' creativity, where the participants will promote human rights and share anti-discriminatory and antihate-speech messages online. Further the youth workers will experience the Loesje methods of creative text writing and final editing, creating their own poster series.

Berlin in June actually turned out to be pretty warm and people nice, not to mention the beer. And obviously, after a few pints, the German language sounds much easier to understand. Coming from all over the world to Germany to talk about stereotypes, we were ready to examine ours and learn to overcome them. There was one, however, that proved to be right : GT (German Time).

One week of training, working in diverse groups (and completing tasks on time, GT) is nothing if not a good start to be continued beyond «What Music Plays On Your Stereotype».

Definitions

Day 2/ E.I.

stereotype ˈ/'stɛrɪə(ʊ)tʌɪp,ˈstɪərɪə(ʊ)tʌɪp/ noun plural noun: stereotypes 1. a widely held but fixed and oversimplified image or idea of a particular type of person or thing.

Nowadays we live in a society in which we face up with huge amount of stereotypes and in the most cases it has a negative effect on our outlook.

ex. "the stereotype of the woman as the carer" synonyms: standard/ conventional image, received idea, cliché, hackneyed idea, formula prejudice ˈ/prɛdʒʊdɪs/ noun 1. preconceived opinion that is not based on reason or actual experience.

ex. "English prejudice against foreigners" "male prejudices about women" synonyms: preconceived idea, preconception, preconceived notion; prejudgement

For example, today we have discussed the war in Bosnia and its influence on shaping the stereotypes on the people that live in this country. The bad consequences of the war have brought about the people in Bosnia many fears and stereotypes like the fear of getting married to a Catholic or an Orthodox etc.

In order to change our thinking that is strongly connected with stereotypes, it is quite important to have a good emotional intelligence. It means to understand and facilitate not only yours but others feelings as well.

As for the prejudices we can say that the majority of people live with lots of prejudices without acknowledging them. Generally, this kind of unreasonable attitudes are towards gender, professions, nations and so on.

The main reason for it is that people tend to look straightforward without acquiring additional information.

In order to overcome it, one should surround him/herself with variety of people as diversity is a factor that contributes to cope well with prejudices.

Discrimination

Day 3/ Mapping

Before beginning our subject which deals with discrimination and which seems to us very interesting because it almost touches the whole world we will give a small definition of the term

Gender equality is another common problem and women in all countries, be it in Europe or the Arabic world, still suffer from pay gap and the glass ceiling. Access to education and discriminatory treatment are common issues.

Discrimination is unjust or prejudicial treatment of different categories of people.

Today each of us has presented situations in their countries, which is really important because we have learned a lot of new information.

During this exercise, we have discovered that there are common points about discrimination in each of them.

We come from different countries, each of which is home to different religious communities. Each of us has spoken of the problems that members of minority communities face.

The third common basis of discrimination is sexual orientation and gender identity. LGBT people still face discrimination in all countries, although some try to solve it and, in others, it is still a stigma.

The common suggestions for how to solve some of the problems included developing educational programmes and raising awareness with campaigns on TV, social media, press and radio.

Keep an open mind "The most open minded city I have ever been to."

We heard a lot of stories about discrimination in the countries which we are coming from, Western Europe, Arabic countries, Caucasus region, the Balkans, Baltic states, but in Berlin we could see the other side first hand- that everyone can be whoever he/she wants to be, without facing any type of discrimination.

Now we want to take this feeling when we go back and try to transfer it in our societies.

Day 4/ Loesje Today, we had a taste of the Loesje creative writing method.

A beautiful experience where we could see the results of our team work.

Starting to share random ideas, and transforming them into deep and powerful messages could only come as a team effort.

Every moment spent into the training, meeting new people and discovering the city, brought us all together and resulted with meaningful posters.

Day 5/ Posters The following posters were created during the training course.

Find them on these links, and spread them: www.loesje.org/posterarchive/ advanced

Disclaimer "The European Commission support for the production of this publication does not constitute an endorsement of the contents which reflects the views only of the authors, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein."