This is a world premiere: On the premises of Werkstatt im Kreis Unna, the participants of the project “Pimp my Europe” presented the results of their work. Special attention was given to the music video for the political hip hop song “Zeit für Frieden” (Time for Peace), written by the youths themselves. On the one hand, the song celebrates the Universal Declaration of Human Rights written in 1948. At the same time, it is an outcry of critique, as human rights are violated so often – here in Europe as well.
Beyond their professionally produced video clip, the active youths further presented a photo exhibition and a video documentation of their whole working process. The process itself is something special: The project brought together youths from five German cities in collaboration. And even though politics wasn’t their thing before, they spent a whole year with intensively dealing with the topics of human rights, democracy, and European citizenship. One highlight was the youth conference at the State Parliament of North Rhine-Westphalia, organised by the participants themselves, where they confronted politicians with their proposals for a Europe in solidarity. As part of their subsequent four-day working meeting in Weimar, the active youths evaluated the content of their work and transformed their results in an artistic way. In parallel to all these activities in Germany, local allies in Italy also realised “Pimp my Europe” at their location.
The whole project is organised by IBB e.V., together with our partners, the City of Bochum, Roots and Routes Cologne, ParkHaus Oberhausen, and Werkstatt Berufskolleg Unna. The release party in Unna now officially concludes the first phase. But there is little time to rest. After having shown the approach of non-formal learning developed for the project to be successful, IBB was able to obtain follow-up funding.
Thanks to funding by the European programme erasmus+ YOUTH IN ACTION, the project continues: Following the title “Pimp my Europe – LevelUp!” 58 youths from Hungary, Italy, and Germany will collaborate in the future, in order to critically and creatively deal with the European educational system, among other topics. The project commences in November at a working meeting in Rome. The highlight of the second phase will be a European youth conference in Brussels in March 2018, also planned by the active youths.
