Overcoming Cultural Borders through Communication Arts

"<< Background >>The motivational basis of the application ""Overcoming Cultural Borders through Communication Arts"" (CAT) is found in the tradition of collaboration between the non-governmental organizations Cultural-Artistic Foundation SIGMA-ART, from Bucharest, Romania, Active XXI Foundation, from Jelenia Gora, Poland and LUTE University from Milazzo, Italy, which have a sustained collaboration over time through the implementation of EU projects, since 2013, for the activation of seniors with a high degree of communication and involvement in project participation. Communication arts activities involving local activities and international workshops have developed new, modern and useful skills in their lives, leading to a creative process of overcoming communication barriers. SIGMA-ART Foundation has made constant efforts during the project implementation to ensure that the project activities are well thought out, meet the expectations of the adult beneficiaries, and the capacities and potential of the staff of trainers who worked in the project are well adapted to listening carefully to the needs of CAT seniors through an educational offer corresponding to their needs for developing artistic communication skills such as theater, dance and crafts.<< Objectives >>The project ""Overcoming Cultural Borders through Communication Arts"" (CAT) aims to contribute to the social inclusion of older people (pensioners, prisoners, students or teachers) by involving them in creative activities such as dance or social theater, but also in creative craft activities, in order to overcome cultural borders through communication arts and to avoid their social isolation and poor functioning in society; to enhance their creativity through new tools, methodologies and techniques enabling the preparation of new training offers and to give them a better possibility to discover their own abilities for themselves and for the benefit of others, such as audiences made up of relatives, colleagues and friends.<< Implementation >>The project ""Overcoming Cultural Borders through Communication Arts"" (CAT) implemented communication arts activities such as, theater performances, theater and radio drama podcasts, dance, and craft activities such as pottery, wicker weaving and embroidery, crocheting, cross-stitching, woodworking and bobbin lances. The fact that the communication arts activities involved both local activities and international workshops led to a high level of motivation for the seniors to participate qualitatively in the project. Thus, they developed new, modern and useful skills in their life, such as learning foreign languages, using a computer or presenting different seminars, which led to a cognitive and creative process of overcoming communication barriers and attracted new and more seniors willing to participate in this kind of projects. The activities of the three organizations involved in the Erasmus+ project, CAT, were based on the principle of implementing educational projects that promote lifelong learning and support creative development, with a particular focus on seniors.<< Results >>As concrete results, we present the CAT international workshops, which took place in the Istituto Tecnologico Ettore Majorana and LUTE premises in Milazzo and Pace del Mela, Italy, materialized in exhibitions of pottery, wicker weaving, embroidery, crochet, cross-stitching, woodwork and bobbin spear, realized by the workshop participants from the three partner countries. This was followed by local training activities and dance and theatre performances developed and presented by the participants of the international workshops from the three partner countries in Zespol Szkol Ogolnoksztalcacych i Technicznych, Krzysztof Cieslak Studio, Jelenia Gora, Poland, in the International Resource Center SIGMA-ART.RO, Bucharest and in the Theatre Club of the Bucharest-Jilava Penitentiary, Jilava, Romania. In addition, the CAT partners, managed to concretize their activity also in a common intellectual pedagogical result, which consists in the presentation of their own methodology of work in theater, dance and local craft activities with their own senior students. SIGMA-ART Foundation concretizes the whole project activity through a multiplier event in front of adult and senior inmates from Bucharest-Jilava Penitentiary."