"Neighbourhoods of Europe, Places of Culture"

Returning to the 14th Meeting of the network in Munich from 29 November to 1 December 2007.
For those of you who did not have the opportunity to go to Munich, we invite you to discover each week, under this heading, a review of the different projects that were presented during this meeting, accompanied by some photos of the musical show "System Error" (Imal production). At the end of these presentations a report will be available on-line early this year!

International Munich ArtLab (Munich - Germany)

Following the experience gained on the WestEndOpera project, a hip hop opera created with young unemployed people and set up by the "Kontrapunkt e.V - Youth Art Culture" association, the idea was born to set up a training and creativity centre for young people in difficulty, "International Munich ArtLab".
The Centre is intended for young people without training and without work, having lost contact with professional life and no longer being motivated to integrate life or professional training.
The aim is to elaborate quality artistic projects with these young people, from conception stage to realisation. The priority of IMAL is to create a cultural institution specialised in artistic training, giving participants a high artistic level so that they can enter into active life.
Supported by a rich network of professionals developing different artistic competences, the disciplines taught will be theatre, cinema, music and new medias, as well as the different technical requirements necessary to these kinds of productions.

Website : www.imal.info

Sakina M'sa, stylist (Saint-Denis - France)

Sakina M'Sa is a young stylist who has appropriated the traditions of her home country, the Comores, to create a global reflection on the notion of territory in the clothes she designs.
Parallel to her work as a stylist, Sakina M'Sa realises different cultural mediation actions in the Cadavres Exquises Textiles workshops. For the most part carried out with women in neighbourhoods, these customisation workshops aim to give to women the possibility of reappropriating their image by personalising their own clothes, and to assert themselves through their own creation, and at the same asking questions about identity, consumption, and clothing codes. These weekly workshops also mobilise outside participants on these questions, and are punctuated by three unifying events: - exhibition, debate and museum visits.

Website : www.sakina.msa.com

Città di Torino (Turin - Italy)

The experience of " Spazio 211 " is one of the most important projects that the Town of Turin has created in an urban peripheral space. It is a public space managed by an association of young people, which has become a cultural centre for music of quality. Numerous activities sponsored by the town of Turin, with young people's associations, have taken place in "Spazio 211". Based on this experience, I should like to present the project of the Town of Turin for sponsoring cultural activities developed by young people who want not only to obtain public financing, but also to create opportunities for territorial development.
Website : www.comune.torino.it