Thursday, 15.10.2015.

Seminar “We and the Others” in Loznica

Every year we implement the seminar “We and the Others”, accredited by the Institute for the Advancement of Education as a training program for social science teachers. The program aims to increase the capacity of schools for interethnic and intercultural cooperation. We believe it is necessary to develop the value system among professors and students that the knowledge of their own cultural and ethnic heritage as well as the knowledge of the culture and heritage of other nations – is a condition for mutual understanding and acceptance.

With the exhibition “The Border is Closed” we adjusted our seminar to migration issues, i.e. the issue of attitudes towards migrants, as well as to the ways of deconstructing stereotyped images of others and those who are different. Together with high school teachers we tested the seminar in this format and they then applied the recommended methods of work and included their students into the work and thoughts about migration, stereotypes and discrimination. In this way the exhibition material and the seminar together make up an educational package for working with high school teachers and their students.

The seminar was organised in “Vuk Karadzic” High School in Loznica, on October 9-11, 2015. The focus of the seminar was the forced migration on the territory of Loznica, through the past and present.

Artists Đorđe Balmazović and Ivana Bogicević Leko presented the results of several years of artistic work with migrants that later became the exhibition “The Border is Closed,” and the historian Nemanja Radonjić spoke of the stereotyped image of others, and the ways to explore the history of everyday life in the local community. The seminar was facilitated by Zagorka Aksentijević and Robert Kozma from the educational program of Group 484.

Project: Our new neighbours – strengthening capacities for understanding cultural diversity – a step further;

Our new neighbours – improvement of migration policy in Serbia and the Western Balkans

Objective: Contribute to the development of openness and tolerance in our society; Build trust and sensitise the local community to understand the situation of asylum seekers and migrants.

Implementers: Group 484 (educational program “We and the Others”)

Support: CCFD – Terre Soldaire, Open Society Foundation Serbia