“xPress Yourself” through Digital Storytelling

Programme:

• Erasmus+ KA227

Field:

• Youth education

Project Title:

• “xPress Yourself” through Digital Storytelling

Project Acronym:

• xPress Yourself

Project Coordinator:

• Eu&Pro centrum vzdělávání a praxe, s.r.o. (Czechia)

Project Partners:

• Sürdürülebilir Yaşam ve Yeşil Gelecek Derneği (Türkiye)
• Michael – Stredni skola a Vyssi odborna skola reklamni a umelecke tvorby, s.r.o. (Czechia)
• Yıldız Teknik Üniversitesi (Türkiye)
• INITIATIVES POUR UNE FORMATION EFFICACE ASBL (Belgium)

Project Summary:

According to the International Labor Organization (ILO) report, 38% of young people are not very hopeful about their career futures, as the crisis will create even more obstacles in the labour market and prolong the transition from school to work.

In this context, urgent measures are needed to support the mental health of young people. Artistic work is one of the most effective ways to improve people’s mental health. Performing art helps a person to express himself and provides physical, mental and emotional well-being.

Digitalized artistic works are an important tool to support young people. Unfortunately, youth work has not been able to keep up with the digital transformation and not sufficiently include young people. According to Ray-CAP (Research-based analysis of European youth programs) research, 55% of youth workers or youth leaders stated that two-thirds or more of youth work was delayed or interrupted. Also, only 17% of youth workers and youth leaders have managed to transfer all their youth work to online formats. (https://www.researchyouth.net/)

These numbers are pretty scary and prove that youth work needs a rapid digital transformation. For this reason, it is very important to quick response and implement innovative digital solutions. Parallel to this, it requires youth workers to develop their competencies and to be skilled in creating digital solutions.

At the centre of the project, the focus will be on Digital Storytelling. As an innovative and artistic approach to teaching and learning that integrates human creativity and technology, it enables the creation of learner-centred and technologically rich interactive teaching and learning environments. Digital Storytelling includes all artistic elements such as scriptwriting, music, literature, photography, animation making. Digital storytelling allows individuals to tell their own stories, learn digital media skills, build confidence and self-esteem, develop language and literacy skills, foster higher-order thinking skills.

In this context, the project will address the method of applying digital art therapy to young people through digital storytelling. The main artistic approach we focus on while creation of digital storytelling will be photography. Photography art is very effective in controlling emotional stress, expressing emotions through creativity and increasing the level of communication. The project aims to strengthen the mental health of young people, to reveal their creativity and artistic skills in terms of photography art, and to gain a method of expressing themselves via digital storytelling. In addition, it is among the aims of our project to provide youth workers with the ability to use digital storytelling as a digitalized non-formal education method and to develop innovative approaches in digital channels in the new normal order.

Enabling young people to establish an intercultural dialogue with their own storytelling, and to support EU Awareness, Identity and common values are among the horizontal objectives of the project.

The main target groups of our project are young people especially vulnerable youth, youth workers and all institutions/organizations in the youth work. In order to achieve the stated objectives, a non-formal educational set in which to gain the necessary competencies to produce Digital Storytelling through photography, and an e- Platform which allows online/interactive sharing are developed.