Simposio Educación Expandida
Un proyecto de ZEMOS98 y Juan Freire // 22 a 29 de Marzo de 2009

ALMOST 18: EXPANDED TEENAGERS

POR Tiscar Lara 29/03/09 // Español

If it seems to be a challenge to work across the curriculum from art or build an Open-Roulotte for intervention in space, now is Amasté who dares working directly with teens, perhaps the age group most complex but probably the most exciting as well. Airoa and Txelu have brought to the Symposium his experience working with youth in the Basque Country in mediation, participation and socio-cultural action processes.

As they tell us, everything expanded from the monographic about teenagers they make for their magazine Eseté. Something happened then because it was the last number been published but also the beginning of a new stage in the project Almost 18. Since then, they have been working in designing processes to help boys and girls to become more critics and learn to tell their story in their own languages.

Teenagers are often represented in the media as consumers and funders of tomorrow, but it does not give them a voice to express their own wishes, fears and concerns. As highlighted also in the presentation of the Bank of Common Knowledge, young people feel they are invisible and that nobody listens to them.

Amasté thinks it is important to teach them how to speak for themselves, using their tools and their own languages. Technology plays an important role but they conceive literacy from a broader sense, talking about media literacy rather than digital literacy, and always looking for the practices at the workshops to have visibility in the net, a fanzine or any other medium. In the words of Txelu, the aim is to help young people "build their own imagination and critical analysis of the world in which they are living", so the work of creativity is not only in terms of self-expression but it is also addressed as a project of civic engagement, "to learn from the other, to engage in sharing things to enhance the processes and feel part of the world".

Among its projects we can find journal fanzines in an online community, audiovisual production by mobile phone and creativity camps for future university students.