Partner meeting in Creative Waves Project supported by the CBSS PSF
On 17th December representatives of all project partners coming from Sweden, Poland, Estonia and Russia met to discuss the upcoming project activities foreseen for the beginning of 2022. Euroregion Baltic was represented by our expert – Krystyna Wróblewska.
Creative Waves – Women Sisterhood for Change project.
Empowering women in the Baltic Sea Region by meeting traditional crafts, local traditions and customs etc with the digital modern world and its demands for change is our goal. Women active in knitting, weaving, storytelling, herb gathering or traditional cooking gather online with creative and digital women experts to get more confidence, show their achievements and learn about the digital world and tools to help them function in the COVID times and beyond. They also meet at international events (online and in flesh) to exchange experience, learn, even more, look together for Baltic traditions and identity. Hopefully in arranging the events while implementing the project its partners will bring together more experienced women and the youth as well as migrant women – to enrich the exchange and help participants be more rooted, open and self-assured. The project is also to help learn about and implement EU key policies like EU Green Deal, European Union Strategy for the Baltic Sea Region and UN Sustainable Development Goals.
The project partners under the leadership of Intercult Productions in Stockholm are: Baltic Sea Culture Centre in Gdańsk, Association of Polish Communes Euroregion Baltic, Estonian Women’s Studies and Resource Centre (ENUT) and a team of women activists from Kaliningrad Oblast. The project lasting from September 2021 to September 2022 is co-finessed by the Council of the Baltic Sea States Small Project Facility
Funded by the CBSS Small Project Facility
Euroregion Baltic, Baltic Sea Culture Institute in Gdansk, Kaliningrad team of activists and Estonian Women’s Studies and Resource Centre ENUT, under the project leadership of Intercult Productions from Sweden, have just kicked off a BSR project aiming at empowering representatives of most vulnerable groups, especially women, in the ever digitalising times of pandemia and post-pandemic.
Together, we – women experts and participants – want to build a feeling of identity, belonging, continuity and agency. We are reaching out to women artists, activists and creatives who may feel isolated, depressed and at a loss as the result of COVID-19 restrictions and the world moving more and more towards digital relations. Using tools of culture and traditional cultural activities we plan to bring traditions and demands of current times together.
Basing on the intangible cultural heritage of the BSR and its localities such as embroidery, weaving, herb gathering, cooking close to nature, singing or producing music, we want to create bonds and exchanges both in physical and virtual reality. As the result of local real-life workshops and online exchanges and meeting, we will produce a tool kit as guidance for further use which will base on the joint pool of experience and a special survey. In our work, we will use a circular approach promoting the EU Green Deal, EUSBSR and Sustainable Development Goals.
The ultimate goal is to create a stronger, healthier and more resilient society with everybody on board, as well as a more friendly physical and digital space.
Creative Waves project partner meeting
Creative Waves – Women Sisterhood for Change project – updates Dec 2021
Empowering women in the Baltic Sea Region by meeting traditional crafts, local traditions and customs etc with the digital modern world and its demands for change is our goal. Women active in knitting, weaving, storytelling, herb gathering or traditional cooking gather online with creative and digital women experts to get more confidence, show their achievements and learn about the digital world and tools to help them function in the COVID times and beyond. They also meet at international events (online and in flesh) to exchange experience, learn, even more, look together for Baltic traditions and identity. Hopefully in arranging the events while implementing the project its partners will bring together more experienced women and the youth as well as migrant women – to enrich the exchange and help participants be more rooted, open and self-assured. The project is also to help learn about and implement EU key policies like EU Green Deal, European Union Strategy for the Baltic Sea Region and UN Sustainable Development Goals.
The project partners under the leadership of Intercult Productions in Stockholm are: Baltic Sea Culture Centre in Gdańsk, Association of Polish Communes Euroregion Baltic, Estonian Women’s Studies and Resource Centre (ENUT) and a team of women activists from Kaliningrad Oblast. The project lasting from September 2021 to September 2022 is co-finessed by the Council of the Baltic Sea States Small Project Facility
General information about the Call and CBSS Funding Instrument:
The 2021 CBSS PSF call focused on innovative solutions for strengthening resilience and inclusiveness in the BSR during a period of crisis.
The CBSS was looking for:
Innovative projects promoting the development of inclusive programmes designed to support groups particularly vulnerable to the pandemic and its effects, in order to offer them alternatives and strengthen their exit pathways from the crisis.
Innovative projects that assess the impact of the crisis on domestic violence or develop strategies, tools and collaboration to build stronger, more accessible, inclusive and sustainable systems for child protection.
Innovative projects build on analysis of crisis impacts on societies and economies, which aim at proposing strengthening of societal resilience in a future, especially taking into account cross-sectoral character of problems and solutions (ex. culture in time of crisis and as a tool to build resilience and help societal and economic recovery, youth as vulnerable group in time of crisis and as a group able to develop innovative recovery strategies and projects).
About the selection
By the deadline 31st of March 2021, the CBSS Secretariat had received 55 submitted PSF applications.
The type of partners in this year’s call have been diverse, varying from NGOs and research centers to public institutions and universities.
The projects have been selected to reflect the selection criteria in the PSF manual, as well as the wording in the PSF 2021 call. The projects selected:
Present a direct relevance to at least one of the three CBSS long-term priorities,
Align with the selected PSF call 2021 subject, Innovative solutions for strengthening resilience by promoting inclusiveness and protection of most vulnerable societal groups in the BSR during a period of crisis
Provide substantial added value for the Baltic Sea Region cooperation,
Display quality and a sustainable character,
Involve relevant partnership constellations, where partners are well established and includes at least three CBSS Member States.
List of the selected projects:
In Newsletter No. 1, we wrote about film screenings as a part of the activities within the FilmNet project – about “Baltic Identity Film Tour”. Such shows and discussions have already taken place in all partner countries, and the Baltic Sea Culture Center from Gdańsk has prepared an Activity Report. What were the results?
The
main question we tried to answer is: what is the common Baltic identity and
does it exist at all, despite many differences between our countries?
The
tool that was used to study the identity elements of the inhabitants of the
Baltic countries – was, of course, the film. Partners from each country have
selected short films (not earlier than in 2016) – and together they chose about
a 100-minute set of films, each of them individually selected for public
screening and film discussion (with experts and the audience). All films were
discussed in details, often induce heated debate about their connection with the
map of concepts.
Nevertheless, several common thematic
areas were identified in the selection process, forming groups of related films
from all partner countries. These
issues include: present, cultural code, individual identity, past.
There
were a total of 2 shows in Germany, 1 in Sweden, 1 in Lithuania and 2 in
Poland. What are the
conclusions?
.
As the authors of
reports from shows and discussions state: at all meetings, the discussants were
sceptical about the existence of the Baltic identity. It’s not easy to find the
answers through the films. They
emphasize the differences between more than common features.
It
can, therefore, be said that the effect of these meetings was a kind of
“discrepancy protocol” – differences in the history, mentality and
customs of the citizens of individual countries. Therefore, it is worth to consider if the searching/building a joint
part between the Baltic Sea countries should not start from a geographically
lower-level – regional level determined in one way or another by the Baltic Sea
(in psychosocial, economic and tourist terms, maybe also historical).
In sum: experience
from the film shows and discussions (and quite common skepticism of
interlocutors regarding the Baltic community/identity) inclines to go dawn on
the lower level of the debate, and at the same time strongly associated with
the Baltic Sea, which in this case becomes a geographical but also a cultural
centre of experience of the Baltic regions.
if the film it’s supposed to be an image of the
problems of the community living in this region and also the starting point
for a more monophonic discussion (and
comparable inference), it is worth considering whether to choose films that
directly refer to the Baltic Sea and regional communities located around it – Prof. Krzysztof Kornacki Institute of Culture Research Gdańsk University
The Baltic Sea Region is home to a large number of diverse, exciting and challenging cultural and creative initiatives. They are diverse in the sense, that they reflect our modern, international and culturally manifold societies. Exciting in terms of the potential to engage participants, to fascinate them with interesting new perspectives and challenging in the sense, that they constantly want to move forward, challenge established value systems and make progress towards a more equal, tolerant and conscious world we live in.
Keeping that in mind, the Baltic Sea Cultural Centre in Gdańsk and the Ars Baltica network would like to follow up on what they previously announced: 2017 and 2018 can be the game-changing years for showcasing the value and driving force of the arts and culture for strengthening our societies in a sustainable way. They are convinced that cultural players can have a significant impact on more sustainable societies and raise awareness about an issue that has an influence on all of us.
That is why the organisers invite everyone to Creative Dialogue in Gdańsk, Poland on March 15th. Together they would like to provide the space for learning about your innovative projects with an international scope, your ideas and where we might be able to create synergies on a Baltic Sea Region level. If you’re interested in participating, please follow this link to register! The registration is open until next week.
Source: ars-baltica.net
Between 8-9th June 2016 the ERB stakeholders met on the island of Bornholm to discuss current and upcoming cooperation initiatives within the organisation in the area of water management, youth policy development and capacity building for local and regional actors. (more…)
