Promoting Anti-Discrimination through Arts Education for the Local Community Point-Eleneio

Project facts

Project promoter:
Undo Point Contemporary Arts Limited
Project Number:
CY03-0004
Target groups
Children
Status:
Completed
Initial project cost:
€22,502
Final project cost:
€22,195
From EEA Grants:
€ 16,660
The project is carried out in:
Cyprus

More information

Description

The project promotes democratic values and human rights—freedom of thought, expression and anti-discrimination—through the design and implementation of an arts educational programme addressing the needs and problems of the local community. It focuses on a multicultural area with families of diverse income, creating a link between Point Centre for Contemporary Art (www.pointcentre.org), and the near-by Eleneio: a historic municipal primary school, battling poverty, xenophobia, and diminishing enrolments, in an area of increasing gentrification and social inequality. The project creates a socially engaged art-educational model using contemporary developments in arts education. It takes the form of: 1. an educational programme specifically tailored for the students attending Eleneio; 2. an exhibition and community events promoting the school and the principles of multicultural education, to the community, and Eleneio alumni; 3. a symposium sharing good practices and expertise between professionals and practitioners in arts education and multicultural education; 4. an online informational package on arts education for the local community.

Summary of project results

The project met its target outcomes by working around problems and engaging the School and the Community in their own terms. As mentioned in section 4.2. it was necessary for the project not to insist on the parents and the school alumni as groups to be targeted through events, but as collaborators. This meant that the project didn’t organise things that aimed at bringing together great numbers in one or two big events, but rather it focused on small events that connected the school community with other things, and helped it find platforms to promote itself and its needs, and create networks in its own time. For example, the durational nature of the Exhibition and the organisation of a Lunch-Time event as well as an Opening, allowed parents and alumni to visit in their own time, according to their own schedules. At the same time, the Community events were organised locally in the centre of Nicosia and didn’t address only “the school community” but the broader community of inhabitants in the area, as well as the passers-by. The project over-achieved its dissemination targets with the Conference Abstract Submissions and the Website receiving a much higher number of hits than anticipated. The attendant numbers in the Workshops were also much higher than anticipated. Most importantly, the project met its target with regard to its effect on the children and the creation of an intimate and positive relationship between them and Point Centre, exposing them to new ideas and expressive tools. Contributing to the creation of an Alumni Committee, as an infrastructural step that will continue to support the school is considered one of the project’s greatest achievements in terms of community engagement, with great effects in promoting the school and its needs as a multicultural school. Most importantly, the project achieved the creation of institutional precedent and open a path that we hope will remain open for other projects in the future: it created a network of collaboration between the Art Centre, the School, the Ministry, and the Teachers, even connecting with an international network of experts in Multicultural Education and Art for the Community.

Summary of bilateral results