Water's Rythm (Youth Exchange)

Since 2010, the hosting center of Vaunières (from the Association Villages des Jeunes) is organizing and hosting a youth exchange called “Melting Potes” (Potes in French means “friends”) which is based on intercultural experience and promoting cultural diversities. Nowadays, and since last year we created a partnership with the association “l’Abeille Beugle” which organizes an experimental festival in Vaunières the last weekend of July. This event creates a perfect context to exchange and create around topics like peace and environmental fear development using music as a main tool. We would like to celebrate European culture on which the whole venue is based by means of artistic expression (Music, singing, theatre…) It’s a real opportunity to co-build peace, to encourage dialogue between people, mutual understanding by promoting "living together and doing together". This idea of Exchange was born at Vaunières, an international hosting centre, where cultural diversity is omnipresent: all year through, European and international volunteers live there together with people from very different social backgrounds. The entire village has been built by French, European and International youths since 1970, so there is a huge story of cultural diversity. The cooperation between Vaunières and “l’Abeille Beugle”, a music festival and workshop organization, creates this new European Youth Exchanges. During this festival, and also during the summer period, Vaunières increases it’s population until around 100 people (usually we’re 20 living in the Hamlet), so the limited resources are a really sensitive topic. During this Youth Exchange, we’re going to create musical tools to sensibilize around the water issue in the Village. 1) Exchange to build a European citizenship using music Discussions and exchanges about different art forms depending on the culture and background of the participants. We will also exchange on how the personal migration and new technology influences the mixity of arts Documentation about the place and Interview/Meeting with people to catch intercultural aspect of the village and the joining groups Awareness about responsible consumption and sustainable development Fight against racism and xenophobia, promote understanding between people, deconstruct stereotypes To reach those goals, we will use different outreach and non formal education methods: picture language, role play, writing workshops, debates, etc. 2) Creation Collective creation of a short performance, using water to aware the water issue on the Village. This will be shown at the festival “Abeille Beugle #3”. We could also realize other productions around the main topic (music, performances, dances, etc.) to illustrate the need of going to an sustainable development. Promotion of the event (distributing flyers, writing articles, taking pictures) Assist in the decoration and set up of representation