In_Cultures

In youth cultural activities, young people learn to enjoy their own skills, strengthen their self-confidence and are encouraged in their existing interests. They learn social interaction in mixed groups. Youth cultures also enable children and young people to take on new roles in the social environment and actively participate in social life. We understand inclusion not only as the removal of specific barriers for people with physical disabilities and people with learning difficulties. Rather, we refer to the ideal of an inclusive society in which all social barriers can be overcome, regardless of whether they are linked to socially imposed conditions based on gender, family history (e.g. migration history), class relations or disability. Applied to our specific fields of work, this means first of all creating spaces in which different perspectives, needs and interests can be expressed as freely as possible. The agreements and contradictions that come to light are then playfully processed in inclusive, youth-cultural group activities. This initiates experiential learning in which the participants mutually reinforce and develop each other. We understand inclusion as a process.

Expanding youth cultural learning

As part of the “IN_Cultures” project, we addressed the question of how youth cultural learning can be further opened up to the needs of young people with disabilities. In a first step, we put the methods and workshop formats developed by cultures interactive e. V. to the test and interwove them with successful concepts of inclusion. From November 2014, the resulting inclusive methods, workshop formats and curricula were put into practice. A total of six impulse project days were held at the youth clubs Statthaus Böcklerpark in Berlin-Kreuzberg and Jugendhaus Königstadt in Berlin-Pankow. Up to 60 young people took part in four workshops on each of these project days. This was followed by 14 days of peer training in both social spaces, the highlights of which were five-day trips to Weimar (2015) and Potsdam (2016).

During the peer training, 30 young people with and without disabilities intensively explored the theory and practice of different youth cultures. Among other things, they developed a breakdance show in which they incorporated different musical influences, from Syrian pop to German rap music. The time they spent together was documented in a self-produced video. Most of the young people between the ages of ten and 23 who took part in the various IN_Cultures measures live in the social areas surrounding the two youth clubs. Some of them also came from the surrounding neighborhoods or from other parts of Berlin. The participants attend different types of schools: Community schools, special schools and grammar schools. Quite a few of them were pupils in welcome classes.

Not only did the young participants gain a wealth of experience in this pilot project, but the IN_Cultures team can also look back on an extremely insightful time. Measured against the original objectives, IN_Cultures revealed both the limits and, above all, the possibilities of inclusive youth cultural work. The limits primarily coincide with the limited time frame of a (model) project. Even if we had a comparatively large amount of project time available for our measures, the sustainable development of inclusive peer groups, of circles of friends of the same age with and without disabilities, can probably be made possible much more in the context of activities that are embedded in everyday life and regular structures in the long term.

Allowing space for different needs

However, we have seen time and again that inclusive processes with a lasting effect can be initiated in such a framework, creating wonderful situations and exciting group dynamics. To this end, it was essential for the workshops to be open-ended, according to the motto: “everything can, nothing must”. In our experience, giving the young people enough space for their different needs is an essential prerequisite so that they are later all the more open to participants who are perceived as “different” and discover common interests and perspectives with them. The setting of a trip with a jointly agreed course of the day and numerous spontaneous conversations and small moments was also decisive for the group formation between the very diverse participants. In the course of this, the young people involved discovered common perspectives in youth cultures. Some of them will act as peer leaders of inclusion in their social environment in the future.

In order to meet the different needs of the participants, some of the IN_Cultures workshops were ultimately offered in a more results-oriented way. Here, the more ambitious young people were able to get involved and develop, while other workshops were framed more freely. Participants who, for a variety of reasons, did not want to or could not work in a focused manner (ability to concentrate, form of the day, etc.) were able to take part. Young people with and without disabilities took part in both groups. In between, the whole group came together again and again, sometimes to take a break and exchange ideas or to start further activities in a different group constellation.

It became clear that a fixed learning plan, a curriculum, is not expedient for us when working with inclusive groups. The needs of the participants are too complex and the requirements can change too quickly. The common goal only emerges in the group process, the course of which cannot be determined in advance. The main pedagogical tools available to us were the inclusive methods, the majority of which were developed in advance by the IN_Cultures team. The most effective of these IN_Cultures methods in our view are presented in this handout. They were used to initiate warm-up, familiarization, team-building and peer-learning processes within the inclusive group. They were used by the team flexibly, often spontaneously, according to the requirements of the respective group situation.