Skip to main content

Culture and Creativity

Published:

FeMENism: anders denken over gelijkheid (FeMENism: thinking differently about equality)

FeMENism is a youth exchange project combining human rights education and theatre performances, funded by the European Solidarity Corps. The project involved an exchange between 30 young people (aged 18-25) from Belgium, Greece, France, and Serbia, for the duration of one week, where participants were encouraged to reflect on gender issues and develop a theatrical performance based on their collaborative explorations.

Sectors:
Countries:
Budget size:
Source of funding:

The activities consisted of a gender workshop, which entailed discussions about gendered experiences in the young peoples’ respective countries, and theatre workshops, which involved drama exercises and prompts for exploration. The whole performance was made out of scenes created by the participants, based on exercises that the trainer prompted them with. In this context, one of the main success factors of the projects was relating to the youth-led organisation and design of the activities.

In the words of one of the lead facilitators: "We didn't want to work around activism, or protest. It's about the little revolutions you can start, about inspiring each other, about doing things differently in your own environment”. The project took place in a Centre for Youth, Art and Creation, called Destelheide in Flanders, Belgium over the summer of 2018. The project originated from a European volunteer who did an internship in Destelheide the previous year, where she conducted research on the possible combination between theatrical performances and human rights education.