RE-THINK THE CHALLENGE

The Re-think the challenge project is inspired by the need for cross-cultural and cross-sectoral reflection on universal design, particularly in relation to climate change and migration. It explores not only thoughts and knowledge about possible scenarios and key challenges related to migration and climate change, but also explores participatory working methods and tools for use in socially engaged discussion and action on these topics. Our work aims to combine research, knowledge exchange and education with new ways of sharing this knowledge with different target groups and audiences.

Philosophy – in a radically politically and economically unstable world and an economically unstable world – responds to the need to understand humanitarian crises, climate crises, migration crises, poverty crises, creates a space for reflection in today’s world that expects swift and decisive action, encourages the search for shades of grey in times that force us to see only black and white. It pushes us to ask questions and seek doubts at a time when we must have a ready answer to every question. And finally, it mobilises dialogue, the search for solutions, understanding, understanding of everything that is new and different, and helps to tame fear.

The project activities are a joint undertaking: Strefa WolnoSłowa, Cantieri Meticci and Reimagining Mobilities and take place in two cities: Warsaw and Bologna.

The project is based on two main methodologies shared by the collaborating partners: community-based, focused on participatory art created with the active participation of the migrant community and refugee and migrant artists (led by Strefa WolnoSłowa Foundation and Cantieri Meticci), and research-based with the participation of researchers from Reimagining Mobilities/University of Bologna.

The project’s activities are divided into artistic and seminar events that take place throughout the year and events condensed into 2 editions of the Rethink the challenge Festival. The 1st edition will take place in Bologna in 2024 and the 2nd in 2025 in Warsaw.

COURAGE, FREEDOM, IMAGINATION program in Warsaw: 

Open calls for migrant artists and participatory workshop processes

Every year we are inviting individual migrant artists, intercultural tandems and collectives to propose their participatory artistic actions for the local community. The proposed activities have to be linked to the project themes and elaborate different kinds of artistic processes open for the participatory creation of Warsaw inhabitants of different cultural backgrounds and of different ages.

The Youth Laboratory for Creative Practices which is an experimental space for artistic activities where the creative process is decided by young people. Together we explore the areas of performing and visual arts. We take inspiration and fuel our imaginations with contemporary art and with each other. An important element of our meetings is the working process itself and the building of a temporary creative community based on shared values, but perhaps on different ways of reaching them.

Curators:

Łukasz Wójcicki – performer, dancer, mover, long-time physical theatre actor. Since 2016 he has been involved with the artistic and social activities of the Strefa WolnoSłowa as a performer and choreographer. Graduate of the Academy of Theatre Practices “Gardzienice”, the two-year course “Experimental Choreography” of the collective Centrum w Ruchu and IC SNDO School For A New Dance Development in Amsterdam. Certified instructor of cross-training, self-defence and the Animal Flow gymanstic-training system. Conducts workshops and movement and dance labs nationally and internationally. Since 2019 she is leading the Intergenerational Movement Choir.

Stanley Ndua – Kenyan living in Warsaw. An activist, community and youth leader, he has been involved in pro-social activities and working in NGOs from an early age. He was appointed by the Office of the Ministry of Decentralisation and Planning to work as a youth community project coordinator in Nairobi. Stanley is a development manager by training and also studies political science, social media and street photography. For the Youth Creative Practices Lab project, he will be a co-coordinator, mainly leading team building, mentoring and group decision-making activities.

Workshops of artistic methods and tools for participatory community creation
The trainings are dedicated to the intercultural groups of artists and cultural animators aiming at exchange knowledge and skills of community artistic work. The weekend sessions dedicated to those guiding the participatory processes of the project. 

THE PLANT MANIFEST – THE PERFORMATIVE JOURNEY

The performative event inspired by the “Nation of Plants” by Stefano Manusco and by the stories of climate change and mobility collected during the project activities. The performance is the form of the sound journey between the images of different visions of the coming shape of our planet and societies. It deconstructs the binary division of performers and audience inviting all to participate in the creation of the dramaturgy by joint storytelling, movement, imagination and discussion to explore the scenarios for the possible and just future. 

SEMINARS ONLINE

Beyond panic? Re-envisioning climate mobilities

Climate change induced-mobilities is an increasingly salient and controversial topic, leading to the risk of sensationally positioning – including stereotyping framing – the issue. Such distortion calls for the need to challenge current narratives and discourses while offering alternative ones based on evidence rather than on preconceived notions. This series of workshops and seminars wants to analyze from different perspectives and foster collaboration between journalists, researchers, activists and artivists to generate possible counter-narratives of the current alarmist frame. 

First seminar:  Beyond Panic. Arts in the Age of the Climate Crisis and Mobilities (in)justice
4 December 2023, 1-3pm
Speakers: Pierluigi Musarò, University of Bologna
Gioacchino Orsenigo, University of Naples L’Orientale
Introduction by: Stefania Peca, Elena Giacomelli
course Humanitarian Communication

Second Seminar: Beyond Panic. The Others of the Climate Crisis
13 February 2024, at 3-6pm (Rome time)
Workshop: Elena Giacomelli e Stefania Peca
Seminar: Andrew Baldwin, Durham University
Mimi Sheller, Worcester Polytechnic Institute

Third Seminar:  Beyond Panic. Journalism and Climate Mobilities: Who owns the narratives?
6 March 2024, 3-6 pm (Rome time)
Workshop:  Elena Giacomelli e Stefania Peca
Seminar: Giovanni Bettini, Lancaster University
Sara Manisera, Fada Collective
Lillo Montalto Monella, RAI

Fourth Seminar: Beyond Panic. Bridging activism on mobilities justice and activism on climate justice
24 April 2024, 3-6pm (Rome time)
Target: activists, artists and artivists
Workshop: Elena Giacomelli e Stefania Peca
Seminar: Amali Tower, Climate Refugees
Andrea De Bernardi, Guerrilla Spam
Andrea Conte, Andreco, Climate Art Project 

Registration form: https://forms.gle/MCNuai41NAwB9FQ19

Link online: https://unibo.zoom.us/j/89178832538?pwd=OStkZFl2TFVhd29NRUZFT0RUazBqUT09

Fifth Seminar: Beyond Panic. Academia, Activism, Arts and Journalism re-envisioning climate mobilities
29 May 2024,  3-6pm (Rome time)
Target: all academics, media workers, journalists, activists, artivists
Workshop: Micol Pizzolati, Davide Caselli, University of Bergamo

Registration form: https://forms.gle/2gk66t3yTCxFFjLv7

Link online: https://unibo.zoom.us/j/83882586325?pwd=V1FFZlhGNngxMDYrcE9rSGFOVmJrdz09  

MEETINGS

The world is changing by Tomasz Stawiszyński and Paweł Boguszewski
Fake news and conspiracy theories? A global climate apocalypse? New migrations of peoples? A third, this time nuclear, world war? Or perhaps artificial intelligence? What is the greatest modern threat? Is this threat real? How do we deal with it – and is it even possible? How do we survive in an age of chaos and disinformation? During the meetings, we will take a look at the most important contemporary problems one by one, reflect on their genesis and nature, learn to distinguish between fantasy and reality, and look for ways to weaken their harmful impact. The classes take the form of a seminar/conversation with workshop elements.

→ Paweł Boguszewski – PhD in biology, neuroscientist, head of the Behavioural Methods Laboratory at the Marceli Nencki Institute of Experimental Biology of the Polish Academy of Sciences, for many years he has also been involved in popularisation of science.

→ Tomasz Stawiszyński – philosopher, essayist, author of, among others, bestselling books Skirmishes with Freud, What to do before the end of the world, Escape from helplessness  and Rules for the time of chaos; creator of the podcast Skądinąd; regular columnist for Tygodnik Powszechny.

Transformations. The unnatural history of environmental crises
Many people involved in the climate movement believe that the annihilation of life on earth is a foregone conclusion, that things have gone too far and nothing more can be done. Can this mood of decline be changed? And how can it be done?
The history of humanity is full of environmental crises – ecological, health, climate. Each time they have wreaked havoc, but they have also been a starting point for change for the better. This history teaches us that every time – even in the face of natural forces – people have a choice. Whether drought, weather anomalies, epidemics or famine bring death or revival is determined not by the scale of the crisis itself, but by the response that societies decide on in the face of it.

In a series we will look at how different societies responded differently to the crisis and the consequences of the choices they made. We will reach far into the past – to the Black Death epidemic and the end of the medieval climate optimum in the 14th century, and to the history that is happening today in Syria and Gaza. We will look at the different responses to 17th-century small-scale glaciation in Europe and Asia, and the effects of the different strategies activated in the face of the El-Nino South Pacific Oscillation in pre-colonial times and in the colonial era. We will ask what scribal storms in the American Midwest have to do with free market economies.

Program is underconstruction.

Stay tuned.