EVENTS: Stranger Festival

Dear StrangerFestival partner and friend,

On Friday 4 July we host an expert meeting as part of StrangerFestival in Amsterdam’s Gashouder. The sessions at the meeting tackle the ways the new folk culture/user-generated video culture is having an impact on television, politics, culture, youth work and civil society. This meeting will be a gathering of some 150-200 experts from museums, local cultural organisations, commercial and public broadcasters, funders, policymakers, researchers, young people and journalists from all parts of Europe. We expect a lively discussion as through our network we already have people flying in from Greece to Helsinki and from Barcelona to Israel. So a good chance to make new friends and build partnerships.

The meeting will start with a presentation of the think tank DEMOS on the research the ECF has supported on the impact of user-generated video to the makers and to the political system (http://www.demos.co.uk/projects/childrenofeuropa/overview). Later during the day we will hear views from actors such as MTV and BBC.

We would love to hear from you and show what you can do. The first session is called Simply The Best where we want to present three outstanding ways of engaging young people with video. It can be the method you use, the tools you have developed, the group you work with, the beauty of the results or the long-term dedication in the project. We want to inspire the visitors to think outside the box, to see the diversity in the field in Europe and get new ideas for partnerships and projects and of course be amazed by the videos.

We are offering 2-3 organisations or individuals the chance to show their work. If you or your organisation is interested, please send a brief of a few paragraphs before Monday 24 March to tommi@eurocult.org describing:
- what did you do and where?
- who took part in the project?
- what results could you show at StrangerFestival?
- what could others learn from your project?
- what makes your work stand out?

If you are chosen for the presentation, the ECF will work together with you to make the presentation work. We are looking for ways to hear from one of the young participants what they got out of it and showing a set of examples from different parts of Europe. The ECF will support the travels and accommodation of the presenters to the festival. We are also open for suggestions from your circle.
Looking forward to hearing from you,

Tommi

Tommi Laitio
Project Leader
StrangerFestival
European Cultural Foundation
Jan van Goyenkade 5
NL-1075 HN Amsterdam
The Netherlands
T +31 (0)20 573 3868