ART(VE)ŠERAJ! ART(VE)ŠERAJ!
Digital media has become the main space for the expression and activation of young people, a large part of the activities of everyday life have been digitised and widely available. Accordingly, digitization of art and culture is also taking its’ place.
In February this year, the Open media group, in partnership with the Center for cultural activities, started the implementation of the one-year project Art (ve)šeraj! Art (ve)šeraj!, financed by the European Social Fund and the Ministry of culture of the Republic of Croatia.
The purpose of the project is to enable young people throughout Croatia to develop talents and give them the opportunity to create artwork under the online supervision of mentors. Free online workshops, accompanied by a platform for learning and presenting art works, will contribute to the development of their digital skills necessary to achieve art in the 21 st century.
The extraordinary circumstances caused by the COVID-19 outbreak have made physical access to artistic and cultural activities impossible for members of all social groups, which has left extremely negative consequences for young people.
This project will organise several weeks of online workshops for young people aged 15 to 25 from five areas of culture and art: music, creative writing, film creativity, painting and fashion design.
The works of art created at these workshops will be transferred to the digital platform, where participants and visitors will have the opportunity to participate in the exchange of ideas, content and vote for the best work of art. Artworks of all participants will have the opportunity to be part of the competition on the platform itself. From each group, will be chosen the best artwork (by the number of votes), and then it will be presented to the general public.
The Open media group with the Art (ve)šeraj! Art (ve)šeraj! Project wants to encourage mutual solidarity, creativity and establish a support system for young people in Croatia. Through structured workshops we will provide free learning of professional art techniques, access to many quality contents and give young people the opportunity to show their talent. We will motivate young artists, especially amateurs who have never had the opportunity to learn artistic techniques in a professional environment and work on their skills. The inclusion of young people in artistic processes, while integrating elements of their own culture into education, develops in each individual a sense of creativity and initiative, rich imagination, emotional intelligence and moral “compass”, ability of critical opinion, sense of independence and freedom of thought and action. In this way young people are directly encouraged to find their own ways of expressing and knowledge about their own processes of thought. In order to achieve all this, we are guided by the basic idea underlying the whole project, which is an individualized approach to every young person who will participate in this project.