Since the beginning of April 2021, the Institute Burja, in cooperation with partners, has been implementing a project called Open Hands. The project partners are the Vivoda Gallery from Zagreb (Croatia) and the Gallery of the First Colony of the Naive in the straw technique from Tavankut (Serbia). The project was approved by the European Commission, under Key Action 227, Strategic Partnerships, within the Erasmus + program. It will last until April 2023.

In the time of COVID-19 global pandemic, countries are watching with uncertainty the negative impact of the pandemic on the cultural and creative sector. The negative effects of the pandemic also reflect on organisations that carry out non-formal educational programmes for adult minority members and adult learners in the field of culture and arts. Possibilities for accessing artistic and minority education have further deteriorated with the crisis.

The participating organisations in the project “Open Hands” joined forces to deal with COVID-19 crisis recovery. The main goal of our project is to highlight that art and creativity, even in the most critical times, present an opportunity, inspiration and motivation to create and promote various forms of networking and education.

As part of this project, the first international meeting of all partners was organised to outline the implementation of the project, achieve the desired results, and adopt a plan for the implementation until the next project meeting, which will be in April 2022 in Tavankut. The host of this meeting was the Vivoda Gallery, which hosted partners from Slovenia and Serbia on May 7 and 8 in Zagreb. The meeting was highly productive. In the preparatory phase of the project, we found that we carefully researched the needs of target groups and connected them with partner organisations’ work, i.e. minority art, their cultural heritage, and connecting traditional and traditional modern art.

The participating organisations in the project “Open Hands” joined forces to deal with COVID-19 crisis recovery. The main goal of our project is to highlight that art and creativity, even in the most critical times, present an opportunity, inspiration and motivation to create and promote various forms of networking and education.

The partnership consists of artistically and minority-oriented educational organisations. Each organisation will contribute to the realisation of the following project goals with its knowledge and experience in the field of (minority) cultural heritage and contemporary art:

• carry out an educational process in the field of minority cultural heritage and contemporary art, which will include flexible approaches to the education of adult minority members, derivated from the exchange of good practices between partner countries,
• carry out international staff training events in Slovenia and Serbia, organise mobilities of adult learners in Croatia: ”Open hands – Art academy Erasmus Istra 2022”, organise a final online exhibition ”Open hands” and design a catalogue ‘Creativity Catalog’,
• actively involve at least nine educators and 30 adult learners from participating countries in project activities, aiming to improve the use of digital tools and creative approaches in teaching and improving the knowledge, skills and competences of adult learners to widen their cultural, educational and economic opportunities on the labour market,
• to develop an international minority-cultural partnership of diverse organisations from Slovenia, Croatia and Serbia and to improve the quality of work in the field of non-formal adult education,
• to establish active cross-sectoral cooperation between civil society and the public, aiming to improve information about different educational possibilities for adult learners.

The target group of the project are educators, mostly also minority members with an immigrant background, minority adult learners and other adult learners. The specific target group are older women, unemployed and / or less qualified from rural areas, who preserve minority cultural heritage by making traditional artistic handicrafts, but who lack adequate knowledge about contemporary artistic approaches, use of a digital tool, project management and dissemination in order to empower themselves economically and to extend the outreach of the visibility of their cultural products.

The methodology in the project is based on the specific needs and desires of minority members and adult learners, taking into account their specific cultural, social and educational characteristics. The project combines classic educational workshops and attractive online communication tools, including the creation of an online project platform, which will include an online art gallery of created products, ‘Creativity Catalogue’. This will enable the participants to present the learning process, their products and their personal reflections. Additionally, the project foresees tangible results such as art products and art postcards, which will also be used as a dissemination tool for different stakeholders.

The result of the project will be the establishment of an international project partnership with developed guidelines for strategic learning development and a better focus on minority members and adult learners. Further on, the project will have a positive impact on improved approaches in encouraging end-users (educators, learners and other participants) in various forms of non – formal education, the use of online tools and creativity in education. This will be reflected through gained knowledge, improved skills and competencies, better exploitation of (minority) cultural heritage and developed abilities of adults for self-initiative, entrepreneurship and creativity in times of crisis.

We thanked all the participants of the first international meeting for their positive energy, quality time, and creative ideas and shared them with other participants.