Bringing dreams to life

Blended learning activities, what is it? Not only education workers but also learners from the partner organisations come into contact with each other. Via virtual exchange through an email list, WhatsApp group or entries in a Padlet. But also through concrete, personal encounters. This was the case in Berlin in August 2021. It started with a collage. With a view to the question: “How do women deal with the current situation?” the groups (learners, staff) of the participating organisations created parts of a “project picture”. The collage travelled from Warsaw to Marseille, Berlin, Wroclaw, Needs/Ireland. With the common “free style story chain“, elements of very real creative writing with pen and paper were combined with entries in a padlet. And photographic explorations of public spaces are combined to populate an interactive map.

During the ‘real’ workshop in Berlin, the focus was on self-perception and self-expression, perspectives on one’s own world and those in the wider environment. The corresponding games and exercises of free theatre work were highly appreciated. It was particularly moving for the participants to turn to their own dreams, wishes and hopes. All too often, women are oriented towards turning towards others and putting their own perceptions aside. In the group of learners, they are the ones who take care of people with impairments or/and the majority of them have social professions. So, the Map of Dreams was a new experience: In the ambience of the Mauergarten (an urban gardening project) they created collages of their dreams for a „happy life in a good society“. The idea was to give shape to what is often ‘dormant’ anyway, but has not been articulated so far. The question of what a person wishes and dreams for should motivate the learners to develop concrete steps towards change.

This was the purpose of the second exercise, Life Line. This invited the participants to derive concrete goals from the dream collages and to consider how they can be achieved. Looking forward often includes looking back: What has happened so far? What feelings do I have when I look back on significant events in my life? And where do I want to go? There was not much talk about it afterwards. Because most women were not familiar with it. But true art works were created.