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Art Colony “Serbia and Kosovo: Intercultural Icebreakers”

Vrdnik, Serbia ... March 6-10, 2017

 

 

The Helsinki Committee for Human Rights in Serbia has organized the art colony within “Serbia and Kosovo: Intercultural Icebreakers” program on March 6-10, 2017. Sixteen young artists from Kosovo and Serbia, working or studying in the fields of culture and arts, spent a creative week together in Vrdnik, Serbia making a stop-motion movie. Prior to the colony, these young artists have participated in a ten days long study tour, during which they attended various lectures, workshops, visited cultural institutions and organizations, enjoyed cultural and artistic events in Belgrade, Novi Sad, Prishtina and Prizren, and had an opportunity to make plans for a joint project, to get to know each other, as well as societies and cultures they are coming from.

During the art colony, young artists had an unique opportunity to develop their ideas and learn about different techniques for creating a stop-motion movie, with the help of their mentor Nebojsa Petrovic, Master of Arts in the field of graphics and sociologist Demir Mekic. Their short film will be based on shared stories and experiences and will depict some of the challenges young people face today in Serbia and Kosovo.

 

One of the participants, Shqipe Gashi, who studies acting at Faculty of Dramatic Arts in Prishtina shared her impressions:

“The Art Colony was a great experience for me! It was such a pleasure to meet new peers and spend time again with people I already knew. It was an honor for me to be selected as participant. I think that this kind of initiatives are a small step to get things better between Kosovo and Serbia. I am happy that I had a chance to made the first steps into changing things for the better. I fully enjoyed these seven days in Vrdnik with all my Albanian and Serbian friends!
Together, we created our little creative hub, got to know each other and one of the most important parts for me was sharing personal and very authentic and moving stories, and making new and meaningful friendships.

We also learned a lot about techniques with regard to creating animation movies, which is very useful and valuable for us actors, performers and movie directors. Working on a scene for our joint stop-motion movie based on one of my personal experiences was very valuable for me.

I am so grateful that I was given a chance to express myself freely with the support of my new friends form the most understanding and encouraging project team!”

 

And, Rade Obradović student from Belgrade said:

“The activity that had great influence on me during the art colony were workshops with Demir. I was given a rare chance to fully express myself by looking deeply into your heart. I was lucky enough to participate in this program and to meet good and inspiring people, first during the seminar and later to live the moments during art colony that will continue to have positive influence on my personality in the future.

One can either easily find a true connection with someone or not, and circumstances in which we work with each other can greatly help or prevent finding that special connections. In my opinion, all were given a perfect environment to get to know each other which created a flow of amazing creative ideas!

We were privileged to have amazingly encouraging working conditions, and were invited into open space and felt completely free to develop our ideas in directions of our choice, all of that with full support of Jelena, Demir and Nebojsa, from whom we learned a lot about animated movies and translating each of our skills and talents onto the screen. While working on a performance with my new friend Izabela, another artist from Novi Sad, I went through different phases of creative process (from initial enthusiasm, through fall of energy, blockade, until discovery of new excitement and explosion of ideas which led to new ways in which I was able to artistically express myself.)”

 

The overall goal of this program is to contribute to renewing old and create new ties between young people, academic and artistic community, media and civil society from Belgrade and Prishtina by promoting intercultural dialogue, reconciliation and normalization process..

 

 

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