The Impact of Moving Communities through Art and Culture in Europe

1. The Impact of Moving
Communities through Art
and Culture in Europe

3.  Migrants are a unique, diverse and interesting group of people who
come from different backgrounds and multiple cultures. They leave their
countries for many reasons. But they have one main reason to arrive in
Europe, and that is to obtain a better life.
 Some of them are highly qualified in many fields which make them want
to live in a progressive country. Others are just longing to get their
opportunity so they can prove to themselves first and to the country
hosting them, that they are able to be productive individuals.
 Our duty is to open doors for them and help them achieve their dreams
especially those who have visions as artists, writers, social workers or
any line of creativity. Our duty is also to give them the plat form where
they can distribute their work, speak loud for their creativity and to
support any incentive that will put a spotlight on their work.

4.  Our presentation is about the need and the aim of the Waves
journal, stages that we went through in making the journal, the
materials and the outcome, and finally the mutual understanding
and impact of such a project on both moving communities and the
host one.
NEEDS & AIM OF WAVES JOURNAL:
 It is a persistent need for any hosting community to understand
the culture and the background of other moving communities and
vise versa. That will break all the walls and the differences
between them and help build bridges of social engagements.
 Building such a project saves effort and time from governmental
bodies or NGOs that work in the asylum field and attempt to
provide individuals and groups with different kind of assistance,
financially or socially.

6.  A journal like Waves will provide a platform for creative migrants
where they can run it on their own, know how to represent their
culture in a better way and produce the proper ideas about it.
 Cyprus has never had such an incentive and the number of migrants
either asylum or workers is big comparing to the population of the
Republic, notwithstanding the big number of Cypriots with foreigner
origin. Therefore such a journal is a necessary way to collaborate
foreigners with locals.
 There are a lot of talents among the migrants. They are well known
for their visual art or writing, and there are a lot of youths that are
waiting for such opportunities to demonstrate their work and are not
able to do so for reasons such as their financial situation, and lack of
connections and recourses.

7. STAGE OF WORK:
 Creating a compatible and multi-tasking editorial team of whom are
artists, social workers, journalists, and editors from different
countries and with different backgrounds, but with a lot of knowledge
of the Cypriot culture.
 Introducing the project to the editorial team and defining the aim of
the journal, building trust and using communication skills to create a
collective work environment that produces new and useful ideas.
 Setting a target, a title, and a theme for the first edition by mind
streaming many ideas; deciding the way of collecting materials and
studying the local culture react to such a journal.
 Creating a callout for the journal and using all kinds of
communication including social media, connections, and information
from social workers who know how to get to people who we wish to
be part of the project.
 Put together the editorial team and some of the contributors into
workshops that introduced them to the nature of such projects, and
the use of media and art in creating trust with locals.

9. MATERIALS & CONTRIBUTORS:
 The journal contains many art and writing work such as short
stories, poetry, essays, reviews, interviews, drawing and visual art.
 The materials have been purified, corrected and edited to suit the
idea and purpose of the journal and do not conflict with the culture of
the host society.
 As for visual art and drawing, many materials were abridged to
make a room for other contributors and other art work.
 Contributors were asked to send their writing in multiple languages
in order to make things easier for them and to also have a variety of
materials. The number of those who contributed through English and
Greek was surprising, and showed us how they are willing to
integrate with the host society.
 The amount of contributors and their desire to be part of the journal
warmed our hearts and pushed us to work even harder and be
productive despite the odds.

10. OUT COME & RESULTS: