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Know more about teams’ projects

Working on a project of regional cooperation is an important task since it aims to inspire exchange and connection between people from contracting parties. It should be taken seriously, and that is the reason we chose teamwork and mentoring as the main tools to help the participants connect and work together.

In order to encourage the exchange and shared experience of learning together and from each other, the participants were regrouped into teams of three. Each team had one member from Albania, one from Bosnia and Herzegovina, and one from Serbia, and each team had a mentor from one of the contracting parties.

Once teams were formed, they worked with their mentors, had meetings online in order to outline and define their project ideas, then put them into practice, and finally, share the results of that work.

This page is dedicated to showcasing the project ideas in the form of presentations, as they were shared during the online seminar hosted by OKC Abrašević from Bosnia and Herzegovina. The presentations show the ideas of the projects, explain the methods used, and give us some examples of how the projects turned out or how they should look once they are finished.

1. ShLe

The project has for title first syllables of cities Shkodkra and Leskovac, one in Albania and one in Serbia. Members of this team (Ana, Kristina and Luka) had an idea to enable easier understanding for people who do not speak Albanian or Serbian/Bosnian, by offering a language-learning space for mentioned languages.

They created a YouTube channel with an Albanian/Bosnian/Serbian basic conversation course and an Instagram profile with posts presenting interesting places and stories about culture from all three contracting parties. They also thought about the diversity of photographs used, and decided to try to find a common angle like i.e. pictures from the most visited tourist places in Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Serbia or presenting the most representative sport discipline in these places, ethnographic costumes, and the most significant content in the local media outlets, etc.

You can consult the whole presentation HERE.

2. Balkan Youth Trip

This is another project that aims to connect better the region through geography and tourism. The three participants making the team (Kristina, Katarina and Robert) decided to create a web page as well as a Facebook page to promote the beauty of the Balkans, their culture, and inspire the youth of the Balkans to travel more in the region and connect more profoundly through traveling and discovering. The team is also working on a video about each of the contracting countries, to promote them additionally.

Feel free to follow their Instagram page, so you can be up to date with their activities and plans.

3.StruggleWithTheInfamousEverydayLife

Dragana, Ensar and Ersa make a team of three creatives, active in different domains – movies, visual arts such as painting and drawing, and music. For them, working on a regional cultural project was inspiring to create together and step into the more experimental side of art. They decided to correlate the experience of the crisis during the current pandemic to other situations where people from Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Serbia were isolated. As a starting point, they did a search of the artistic events and happenings in the domain of film, music, and visual art, created during those times and as a response to those crises. And while each participant, Dragana in the domain of film, Ensar in the domain of visual arts, and Ersa in the domain of music did a little, individual search, they all shared work and creative energy to produce a short experimental movie that reflects their experiences of the current crisis.

You can consult the whole presentation HERE.

4. “I long to speak”

Kristian, Mustafa and Ivona make a team that decided to focus on languages – the musicality and the typography of Albanian, Bosnian and Serbian were their main inspiration. Using the poem “I long to speak”, from Rabindranath Tagore’s book The Gardener, and its translation to the three languages, they are exploring the musicality of each language. In a very unusual way, using a poem as a common ground to start from, they played with the linguistic differences evoking the same message and emotion planted in Tagore’s work followed by music and animated elements.

You can consult the whole presentation HERE.

5. Heritage stories

Being neighbors brings a lot of shared history and heritage, especially in the Balkans where everything is intertwined, but the uniqueness of the individual views on this heritage is something worth focusing on, and a good tool for connecting people, according to the project that Andjela, Algerta and Ljiljana worked on.

The goal of the project was to get to know more about how people between the age of 18 and 30 see the heritage, what they identify as their heritage, and to share stories on it. This initiative is open to all the young people from this age range wanting to share their stories, so we can get to know each other, connect, and deconstruct prejudice.

You can consult the whole presentation HERE.

6. The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on art and authors

Being part of the project of cultural cooperation during the global pandemic affecting all the segments of our lives, inspired the team whose members are Kristina, Ivana and Xulian to create a questionnaire about the experience and all the effects of COVID-19 on the artist in different domains. Were all the arts in the contracting parties affected in the same way? How did arts and artists adapt to the requirements of the „new normal“? These are just some questions this project and research touch on.

You can consult the whole presentation HERE.

7. The culture of forgetting

Boris, Romina, and Vanja make another team whose work was focused on the importance of local places and how their stories go beyond official data of historical importance. The starting point for their work was their exchange within the team and shared conclusion that all three cities, Belgrade, Tirana, and Mostar have many abandoned places, once vital for the cities and now (almost) ruined and/or forgotten. Using video interviews, they are evoking these places, giving them an homage and inviting people to connect through these personal stories, so similar even in different locations in the Balkans.

You can consult the whole presentation HERE.

8. The sword in the concrete

Another team that was inspired by the heritage is the one whose members are Elsaida, Nives and Marko. Using the heritage as the frame for their project, they focus more on the specific period in time and heritage created during that period – brutalism in architecture.

Investigating the monuments from socialist times of Yugoslavia and Albania (1948 -1991), their significance in the society and their treatment nowadays as well as their future the team worked on a short documentary with individuals relevant in this domain – architecture students, architects with experience and curators from museums and cultural organizations dedicated to this period in history.

You can consult the whole presentation HERE.

9. DINING TOGETHER – A cultural round table

A unique project was outlined by Nikola, Gojko and Elsamina who thought of the role the food has in the Balkans. With all the differences, the Balkan region melds together and borrows from each other in the domain of food, and at the same time, each side has distinct views on it. The team would create a short documentary, about people from Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Serbia, working in the food industry. The idea is to connect with local communities, invite others to join, and to broaden the perspective on the neighboring countries.

You can consult the whole presentation HERE.

10. Discovering Ottoman Cultural Heritage

Another project focusing on the shared geographical and cultural symbols is the one created by Miljana, Hamid and Ana. But, their team decided to focus on a rather distant period in time and its traces in present times – the Ottoman Empire and its cultural heritage.

Creating an online, interactive map of Belgrade, Mostar, and Tirana with pinpointing the locations dating back from the Ottoman period in the region, they invite all the interested individuals to take a walk in their cities and neighboring cities, as a part of this tour.

You can consult the whole presentation HERE.