Category Archives: Projects

Citizens Lab, Projects, Uncategorized, Videos

CitizensLab / A Lab Approach

C&C is very proud to be a member of the European Citizenslab.

Citizenslab is a participatory network of local actors of change from different sectors and context trying to generate systematic change from the root level and not just to tweak symptoms of what is not working. The underlying question is:

 ‘How can our diverse practices create a more meaningful quality of life in Europe’.

We use a so called Lab Approach to illuminate each other and let a new community intelligence emerge.  The key elements of a Lab Approach are:

  1. A shared longer term goal
  2. A core group that co-designs and co-hosts the process and navigates the complexity of the lab
  3. Series of experiments and prototypes where the new system is enacted in real-time
  4. A community of practices for a new system of influence

Projects, Uncategorized

Tandem comes to Odessa

From 23 to 27 September, 140 members of the Tandem family, all participants of the three most recent Tandem programs, alumni like us and the Tandem team came together in Odessa.

With Tanztangente, our partner from Berlin, we shared our insights and experiences with the others during a very well received workshop.

 

Citizens Lab, Projects, Uncategorized

SWAG

SWAG (Share ideas, Work together, Act now, Get involved)

Within CitizensLab we work on a prototype to develop new models for education. We want to help children and young people to realise their full potential and to become active citizens. We address education by involving schools in the practices and integrating them in community life. We promote freedom in education and want to strengthen the rights of pupils to take responsibility for their learning processes as well as to advocate democratic participation to become part of decision-making processes in schools.  With partners from Budapest, Sofia, Frankfurt, Barcelona and Athens we started preparing a project called SWAG, trying to combine learning and active citizenship.

Projects, Uncategorized, Videos

“This is not a Hotel”

Ed Santman and Monique Baan worked intensively in the first months of 2017, making a documentary with a group of inmates and prison staff at PI Sittard, a prison in the South of the Netherlands. The result is a very special portrait of the life behind the prison walls, it was filmed by the prisoners and the prison workers who collaborated as a team to produce this documentary.  Later this year we will work with the same group on a magazine which will involve augmented reality as a tool to add some of the scenes of the documentary.

See the trailer at:

or see the whole video at:

 

Projects, Uncategorized, Videos

Making the Magazine

A group of young at risk at JP Heije institute in Oosterbeek worked on a magazine as a pilot for the Valmopris project. The teachers were Saskia Kettelarij and Sanne Willemsen.

With “Making the Magazine” they aimed to motivate these young people to contribute actively towards a common goal. The learners worked with photography, drawing, painting, writing and interviewing. In the first week all were researching what they like to do and what their talents are. This led to an editorial team and further division of tasks. Next the participants got creative and started to collect materials.

In the last week all material was made into one magazine with lay-out and graphic design. The final result was put together with the editorial team and printed in a limited edition so that the participants, teachers and the hosting organisation could disseminate them within their networks.

European Projects, Nonformal Learning, Projects, Valmopris

Valmopris Pilots

For the European KA2 Valmopris project, on validating non-formal learning in prisons each participating country has to deliver 6 pilot projects in prisons with minimally 3 prisoners involved.

Since Changes&Chances is not just an educational organization for prisons, we are running the pilots with a variety of target groups and with a variety of art disciplines.

The first pilot was Ed, Mirthe and Peer creating Noah’s Ark for the Bosch Parade with recovering drug addicts It attracted a lot of attention from the media. Under ‘ projects’ on this site you’ll find photo’s, video’s, and an interview with Ed of ‘Stowaways’.

In Arnhem two inspired teachers, Saskia and Sanne, of Cultuurmij Oost work with a group of young people with behavioral issues. They will create a magazine, so there will be planning content, finding their writing, drawing, photographing and designing talents will take place and then working hard in collaboration to get it done.

In Zutphen prison a band was formed and songs were written, rehearsed and played. The teacher, Hanneke, also gave personal lessons to a number of the participants so that good progress could be made.

In Rotterdam, in De Nieuwe Kans, young people without school diploma of which some have been in touch with Justice will be followed on the Level5 method during a theatrical project.

And last, but not least, down South in Sittard prison, Ed and Monique will make a video with the prisoners, and some of the guards and staff that will transformed into an ‘Augmented reality’ item to be seen in an app on your smart-phone projected on the façade of the prison when you visit there. Partners and other visitors will be given access to the app. The director of the prison is very enthusiastic about the project and wants to get broad media attention for it.

European Projects, Projects

Empatheast Vratsa Bulgaria

“Rethinking social good and social innovation”

 Changes and Changes will be one of the organizations participating in the Empatheast forum in Bulgaria  from 11-13 November

In this meeting in Vratsa, one of the poorest regions of Bulgaria, we will be embarking on a journey where we make new models of relationships between individuals, groups and communities.

Social innovations are not a solution to all problems, they are not enough per se, but they represent a way for mass mobilization of group intellect in the name of new solutions that will allow more people on the planet, in our country and our region, to live with dignity and to their full potential.

It is vital that we become more efficient at using our common resources. Only with innovative solutions by and with communities can we reduce the costs for non-effective and expensive social solutions, perpetually repeated by local and central government despite their proven ineffectiveness. So we need to change the way these solutions are designed and move towards developing solutions bottom-up, as they are more stable, honest, adequate and inclusive.

More information: http://empatheast.net/#home

Citizens Lab, Projects

First European Commons Assembly

How the commons can revitalize Europe.

The commons is an emerging paradigm in Europe embracing cocreation, stewardship, and social and ecological sustainability. Commons perspectives could help to reinvigorate Europe with constructive and concrete policy implications on many terrains. However, much of the current dominant narrative of the EU, focusing on growth, competition, and international trade is in strong contrast with the worldview of the commons. C&C chair Ed Santman was present at the first European Commons Assembly.

In mid-November of this year, the European Commons Assembly was held in cooperation with the Commons Intergroup in the European Parliament, made up of Members of the European Parliament from different parliamentary groups, mainly Greens, the United Left (GUE/NGL), and several Socialists & Democrats Group (S&D) members. The ambition was to promote the establishment of creative institutions and political alternatives, from the local to the European level. In the call for the Assembly, ‘commoners’ from around Europe stated: “We call upon governments, local and national, as well as European Union institutions to facilitate the defense and growth of the commons, to eliminate barriers and enclosures, to open up doors for citizen participation, and to prioritize the common good in all policies.