ANTI-RACISM CONFERENCE: Community Responses to Breaking Down Structures

Anti-racism and Civic Courage Training (ACCT) is a transnational project focusing on the decrease of discrimination, including multi-dimensional discrimination and racism, xenophobia and other forms of intolerance. The partners also aim at combating discrimination, hate crime & hate speech across the EU.

https://www.acctforchange.eu/anti-racism-conference-community-responses-to-breaking-down-structures/

 November 18, 2024

My name is Kiara, I have been an intern at Crossing Borders for almost three months now, and on Friday, October 25th, I had the amazing opportunity of attending the first (and possibly not the last) ACCT Anti-Racism Conference at Union. 

I also had the chance of not only attending the event but watching the event slowly come together from designing posters for the events and boosting them on social media pages, on the day of I also had the opportunity of successfully moderating a panel on Grassroots to Global: Building Anti-Racist Movements. On the day there were a total of three emotional and upbeat dance, theater, and rap performances, as well as two panels and two keynote speakers who each touched on relevant themes related to racism in the performing arts, obstacles to funding, discriminatory immigration policies and the motivations that brought them to their work. On attendee and Crossing Border Intern, Egle shared her impression of the event stating, ““I think it was a good start for starting a conversation…I see this event as a comfortable starting point in the discussion about racism in Denmark.” Another attendee by the name of Laura, also shared her thoughts in reaction to the theater performance, of Blinkered, performed by Wanjiku Victoria Seest. In her words, “the performance made a big impression on me. It reminded me of the danger of a single narrative, how it simplifies and dehumanizes a whole continent and its people, by taking away the nuances and their and replacing them with assumptions and stereotypes. It was such a powerful performance, I had goosebumps the whole time!” 

Ultimately, I would also agree with everyone at the conference on Friday that the conference provided a useful entry point to normalize conversations of race, racism, discrimination, and anti-racist organizing that is happening locally in Copenhagen and being acknowledged at the systemic level nationally.

Funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Education and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA). Neither the European Union nor EACEA can be held responsible for them.

ACCT Copenhagen TPM & Conference Moments

 

Anti-racism and Civic Courage Training (ACCT) is a transnational project focusing on the decrease of discrimination, including multi-dimensional discrimination and racism, xenophobia and other forms of intolerance. The partners also aim at combating discrimination, hate crime & hate speech across the EU.

Funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Education and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA). Neither the European Union nor EACEA can be held responsible for them.

ACCT Copenhagen TPM & Coordination meeting

Anti-racism and Civic Courage Training (ACCT) is a transnational project focusing on the decrease of discrimination, including multi-dimensional discrimination and racism, xenophobia and other forms of intolerance. The partners also aim at combating discrimination, hate crime & hate speech across the EU.

 

Funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Education and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA). Neither the European Union nor EACEA can be held responsible for them.

May 15-17, 2024: ARM-BG Pilot Training in the LS-Photos

Anti-racism and Civic Courage Training (ACCT) is a transnational project focusing on the decrease of discrimination, including multi-dimensional discrimination and racism, xenophobia and other forms of intolerance. The partners also aim at combating discrimination, hate crime & hate speech across the EU.

 

Funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Education and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA). Neither the European Union nor EACEA can be held responsible for them.

Pilot training Agenda § Feedback of the ACCT project

 

Anti-racism and Civic Courage Training (ACCT) is a transnational project focusing on the decrease of discrimination, including multi-dimensional discrimination and racism, xenophobia and other forms of intolerance. The partners also aim at combating discrimination, hate crime & hate speech across the EU.

              AGENDA

Day 1st 15/05/2024	Ø  Introduction to each other and Ice-breaking games; Ø  Introduction of the ACCT project:  Is there a need to be trained in anti-discrimination and anti-racism and how could we eventually do it? Ø  Introduction of our 3 days communication, thinking, storytelling, acting and discussions;
Day 2nd 16/05/2024	Ø  Post-colonial analysis of the European ‘Migration Crisis’ Ø  Implicit Social Cognition Ø  Attitudes, Self-Concept Clarity, Self-Esteem, and Stereotypes
Day 3rd 17/05/2024	Ø  Briefly about the legacy of Augusto Boal and Paulo Freire; Ø  Doing Image & Forum Theater – games, storytelling and  performance;   Ø  Closing up

 

 

              ARM-BG Pilot Training in the Lebanese School (LS) in Sofia

15, 16 and 17 of May, 2024

 

About the LS

The Lebanese school was founded 26 years ago as a private school by a couple of Lebanese families. As all private schools in BG it is under the supervision of the Bulgarian Ministry of Education. In 2023 the school was already very popular, well packed with students and moved to a new building, allocated by the Sofia municipality and renovated by the school community. The school accepts and trains kids of Arab and mixed marriage backgrounds from about 18 Arab countries. There are three official languages spoken in the school - Arab, Bulgarian and English. The non-official ones are more, our trainees - young adults from the upper grades didn’t have any problem understanding the Spanish text on one of the ACCT competition winning posters. The fact that the students were first or second generation migrants was relevant to the training’s goal. Students from 10^th and 11^th grades attended the trainings. The age group was between 15 and 17.

ARM-BG pilot training issues

The Pilot training in Sofia was adapted to the context and the Schools’ cultural specificity. One of the requirements of the parents was not to have any LGBTQ+ issues mentioned in the training. During the Forum Theater workshop the participating teenage boys asked to avoid any facilitating exercises involving touching each other in the mixed male/female group. That’s why we transformed the exercises, involving touching to ones without and had this requirement in mind in the rest workshop activities.  The overall number of the students attending the 3 days training was over 49 plus a couple of teachers. On the first day we had a problem with the already prepared table for the participants’ list.  One of the teachers informed us that the students were not supposed to give for the participants’ list any other information about themselves, but for their names and emails. Due to this intervention, not all of the first day participants filled-in the required information. We transformed the template for the rest of the training days.

 

Adaptation

A relevant adaptation was the linking of the training to the postcolonial history of Europe, of the Euro-Med and MENA regions’ countries and its impact on Migration, Racism and Discrimination.

Brief adapted texts were distributed in advance to the students and teachers and that facilitated discussions during the training sessions. Discussions were relevantly linked to brief Q&A sessions, ice-breaking, energizing and feedback exercises with the students. Among the issues discussed were implicit social cognition, attitudes, self-esteem and stereotypes, as well as migrants’ cultural identity conflicts and ways of dealing with them.

On the third day, Friday, May 17, 2024 we introduced the Forum and Image Theater social change potential and did some relevant training exercises.  

Feedback & Post-Training Reflections

The LS students and teachers recognized as training-relevant the topics of anti-discrimination and anti-racism. They liked the 3 days training sessions and our team was invited to continue training in the new 2024/2025 school year. The theme was regarded as a topical training possibility.

Popular and animated communication referent points were the ACCT posters and cards. The school administration asked for an additional set of the big posters. The fact that the posters were created by university students was very relevant to the training.

Reflecting on the training results the facilitators found appropriate for further ACCT related trainings to perform a relevant pre-training interviewing research of the potential trainees’ cohort - of both teachers’ and students. Among other things, such preliminary interviews would provide better information for aligning the training program with the educational institutions’ internal rules.

 

Funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Education and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA). Neither the European Union nor EACEA can be held responsible for them.