Finding a common language
Are people from different cultures and countries able to communicate without using a spoken language?
We say YES! For this reason, we invited young people from 6 to 18 and their parents to our festival “Finding a common language”
The festival took place 2023 in 3 locations over one weekend each:
12-14.5.2023 with the Iguanas in Munich/ Germany. Program
30.6.- 2.7.2023 with the Circus Upsala in Zeitz/ Germany. Program
22- 24.9.2023 with Unison in Yerevan/ Armenia. Program
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What happened:
In the capital of Bavaria:
At the festival in Munich, our focus was on wheelchair basketball as a non-verbal means of communication, including interaction and breaking down of barriers and advantages. By participating in different training stations, participants learned about different aspects of wheelchair basketball—from wheelchair handling to dribbling and dice throwing.
The festival programme was complemented by activities of the invited partner organisations from Zeitz and Yerevan. Upsala Zirkus e.V. offered a minilaboratory with circus elements and Unison NGO invited to join a move and dance workshop to experience the language of movement.
Afterwards, the participants tried out what they had learned together with the professional athletes in a wheelchair basketball tournament.
As a highlight, the german national wheelchair basketball team, (U22), the team from Yerevan and the Iguanas presented a master class in wheelchair basketball and held a friendly tournament.
In the new capital of street circus:
The festival in Zeitz, the home of Upsala Zirkus e.V., became a big creative laboratory: circus elements and wheelchair basketball supported by music as an international and non-verbal language created a new inclusive safe space where everyone was able to express themselves.
The young participants learned various circus disciplines, wheelchair basketball elements, created music with unusual objects and showed it all off with a wonderful performance at the end of the festival.
Armenian music was also part of the program: Artak Khachatryan took the participants into another world of duduk music and Rasmila Alaverdyan taught the basics of Armenian music with children and young people.
In the capital of the oldest Christian country in the world:
At the end of September, we went to Armenia: Here the focus was on nonverbal communication in general.
Regardless of the circumstances, it is very important to motivate children and young people to live together and shape the future, regardless of different cultures, countries, languages or disabilities. For two days, children and young people were able to participate in various activities, learn new things and get to know each other informally despite language barriers.
Not only newcomers from Armenia, but also from Georgia participated in the festival. Ten young people, their parents and companions from the Georgian Down Syndrome Association attended.
Unison NGO with many local actors offered various activities: “Inclusion in action”, games where everyone could experience disability: Using wheelchairs, finding a seat as a “blind person”, etc.; darts and/or bocce competition; first aid course; learning an inclusive dance; learning the basics of Armenian sign language. The wheelchair basketball players of the RBB München e.V. were also on hand and, as always, had a full gym with youngsters eager to participate in a tryout.
The Upsala Zirkus e.V. prepared many exciting circus activities.
At the opening of the festival in the Goethe Center Yerevan, the award-winning inclusive chamber choir “Paros” performed, complemented by a discussion with Maka Chkaidze from Georgia.
During the three festivals, three video messages were recorded connecting the participants from Yerevan, Munich and Zeitz.
About our partners:
Unison NGO for Support of People with Special Needs is a leading organization advocating for the rights of persons with disabilities (PWDs) in Armenia. With the mission to achieve full inclusion of PWDs, Unison regularly designs and implements grant-funded projects and other activities aimed at improving physical accessibility and access to information, promoting PWDs’ placement in gainful employment, fostering inclusive education, enhancing coordination and cooperation between disability-oriented organizations and other initiatives aimed at improved general well-being and social, cultural and economic integration of PWDs.
Zirkus Upsala e.V. is a non-profit organization that has been reintegrating children and young people from social risk groups into society using the methods of circus education in St. Petersburg since 2000. Due to the political situation, the members of the organisation had to flee to Germany, where they now combine professional circus and theatre arts directly with social and refugee work.
Since its foundation, the wheelchair basketball club RBB München Iguanas e.V. has been working with young people and schoolchildren from Munich and the surrounding area and has also run several inclusion workshops for refugees. Wheelchair basketball is the only sport in which people with and without disabilities, regardless of age and gender, can compete with and against each other on an equal footing. The wheelchair becomes the sport equipment. No language skills are needed for wheelchair basketball, as all communication is non-verbal and intuitively.
Antares Media Holding is a publishing and printing house as well as advertising and marketing agency that uses modern technologies to ensure high quality products. The company was founded in 1992 and has published more than 2000 books to date.
The project is funded by the German Federal Foreign Office as part of the programme “Expansion of Cooperation with Society in the Eastern Partnership Countries and Russia” and by the Bavarian State Ministry for Family, Labour and Social Affairs:
