I asked Ana Vale, the event coordinator and Head of EQUAL Managing Authority, Portugal how she feels now that everything’s finished.
She looked as happy and tired as she said she was. “I’m very happy. It went well. I’m relieved it’s over. it was very intense, full of stress, very gratifying. The atmosphere between people was very interesting; it was creative and there was a lot of happiness… it’s something not to forget.
“And now I’m going to rest.”
Ana Paula, a prisoner from Castelo Branco was asked to talk about her experience of a programme called “a day in prison” for young people to spend a day living with a prisoner to see what it was like.
“I was happy to be showing people the age of my son the prison system, the rules we have to follow, to share the space in my cell and the discipline we have to undergo when we don’t behave so well. They ate with us, came to school with us, and everything. At the end of the day we all came together to talk about the experience. They didn’t say much, but there was a shine and a tear in their eyes. They said they hadn’t imagined that we live like that and didn’t think they would be able to. I too, never thought I’d be able to live like that, but adapted.
Etienne Wenger was at the event to talk about community knowledge, learning and identity. These are notes of what he said about EQUAL, the need to supporting social artists and learning citizenship.
“When I look at EQUAL and the hope for EQUAL I’m pushed to ask - what is the real potential legacy of EQUAL? Where is the sources of real innovativeness and how do you get those 320 solutions you say you have from a website into the lives of people?
“The real legacy of EQUAL is that of trying to build the social infrastructure of innovation. This is hard work. It takes a complex system of communities and networks to do this. We need to talk to each other beyond our countries and cultures in order to see how we can give a voice of EQUAL to see how to create this social structure.
“The key success factor we’ve found is learning citizenship where learning citizenship is a personal commitment to seeing how we are as citizens in this world. Let me give you and example: I know an oncological surgeon in Ontario, Canada who asks himself how to provide the social infrastructure for patients to learn about cancer. An act of learning citizenship is to be able to use who you are to open this space for learning. I’ve come to call these people social artists, people who can create a space where people can find their own sense of learning citizenship.
I love social artists. In fact I worship them. First because social artists know how to do what I only know how to talk about; and second because I care about the learning of this planet. I think we are in a race between learning and survival. We live in a knowledge economy where any expertise is too complex for any one person. One person can’t be an expert so anyone who can give voice to that need to to work together is a social artist.
I do a lot of consultancy work for training community leaders, but in my heart of hearts I know the real secret of those social artists is not something I can teach. The real secret of those people is knowing how to use who you are as a vehicle for opening spaces for learning. I don’t really have the words - but I just know when I see it. It is a way of tapping into who you are and of making that a gift to the world … it’s about being able to use who I am to take my community to a new level of learning and performance.
I want to leave you with three questions…
These are urgent questions. Social innovation a matter of the heart, not just projects. We need you to do that for the world, not just Europe.
Twenty five years ago I looked around and said that I wanted to be part of powering a new future.I saw it wasn’t going to happen in Switzerland and went to the US. Now I see that ESF is creating a social learning system across countries and cultures … it’s trying to do something we don’t know how to do. Across Europe you are offering concrete examples of how, as a planet, we could be building the social infrastructure. And I’ll be back to see how you are doing it.
Closing comment at the end of the panel: one thing that comes to me is the notion of spaces of trust - trust comes out of a focus on practice. Trust when you focus on practice and what you care about. Knowledge is easy, practice isn’t. Social artists are good at recognising the practioner in each of us.
Allen Mercer, the Commission’s thematic expert for employability, talks about the conclusions of a session with Ana Martins of GPS in Portugal, the UWV Social Security Agency of the Netherlands and Washington Rimas of Afroreggae in Brasil. He reinforced the slogan of many EQUAL beneficiaries:
“Nothing for us without us” or, or in other words, “Don’t do it for us, do it with us.”
He also stressed the importance of involving experts through experience so that people are then seen as part of the solution rather than being regarded as part of the problem.
The sibling conflict, with new small sister
-”Go change into something decent. Why are you wearing this mini-skirt, my sister should dress properly and not walk around in this stupid short skirt!” The young guy towers over his sister and acts threatening.
-”But all the girls wear the same… I think I can dress the way I like” the sister shouts back. Their conflict escalates and the brother hits the sister.
This is a small scene a group of youngsters from Vale da Amoreira showed. At this point Gisella steps forward in the group of young actors and asks -to actors, audience and everybody in general: “Now how could this have been solved differently?” After a few general suggestions an especially responsive person from the audience is invited to come forward. A huge lad now takes the necklace of the girl and takes over the role of Michaela. The scene starts with the girls dancing, the brother comes up to them and starts again: Go change into something decent!… Only this time he is talking to a man his own size. The new actor tries to stand up for his right to wear what s/he chooses, but to prevent conflict.
The Grupo de Teatro Fórum do Vale de Amoreira is demonstrating the way Forum Theatre works.. by doing it. Forum theatre is a way to both work with groups of actors, engage them in something which will give them self-esteem AND reach out to others by doing it, in the schools, in the neighbourhoods.
Afterwards I meet some of the actors. They are between 15 and 34 years old, and meet twice a week to practise. They think of their themes themselves, and do not use any written scripts. In the videos they talk about themselves. The videos are in Portuguese.
Last night we heard some fado at the Convento de Beato over dinner.
An in-depth conversation before going into the Opening Session…
I asked Etienne what he was doing at this event organised by EQUAL and the European Social Fund. He told me what this event meant for him, as a social learning theorist. I couldn’t resist also asking what it meant for Barack Obama!
Tom Wolff who “creates collaborative solutions” talked to me on Skype about his connection to Lisbon, coalition and how that all connects to US President Elect Barack Obama.
Ana Vale on Powering a New Future
In a pause between meetings I asked Ana Vale, the manager of EQUAL managing authority in Portugal, how the organisations are getting along for the big event - Powering a New Future. They are expecting up to 3,000 people over the three days in December so you can imagine what must be happening behind the scenes.
“A lot of work and a lot of enthusiasm…” was her reply.
She says that the point of this event is to show what projects in EQUAL and ESF (European Social Fund) have being doing over the last eight years.
Above all, she hopes that people will be inspired by the stories of getting people who suffer discrimination of any kind back into the workforce. Presenters are coming from Portugal, other countries in Europe as well as India and South America.
It will also be a time for networking and meeting people who could one day be project partners.
Click on the video to watch the whole interview.
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