CHANGING ROOM Staff Exchange

Olivera is my colleague from CyberRex, sitting opposite to me … phlegmatic and smiling person, born in Čačak and working for Free Zone projects as a main organizer. Every morning she travels more than one hour to our office, then me and Sasha (another EVS volunteer working with me for Free Zone) ask her: “Oljia, kafu?” She gives us great smile and we are glad to make her one small and strong turkish coffee. She’s always willing to help us … or answer my often bothering questions such as: “Kako se na srpskom kaže …? Šta znači … ? Kde se nalazi …?” (How is called in Serbian … ? What does it mean …? Where is located … ?)

Sometime you can’t notice her presence … but calm mumbling betray her. She’s the second person (right after Sasha) which I spend the most of my time in Rex with. I don’t know a lot about her but in her case, it is not necessary. She says: “Do what you want, just don’t tell me about that! :D” But I am sure that if I am in trouble, she cares.

Prokopová Martina

Talented Openmined Smiling and Singing all the time Hardworker Night Bird Morning lie-abed Dear friend Bass-guitar player Playful ………

Bojana

Nadarena Otvorenog duha Nasmejana I pevuši po celi dan Vredna Nocna ptica Spavalica Draga drugarica Bas gitarista Spremna za igru ………

Martina Prokopová

Ahoj! ☺ Zdravo!

I am Martina from north of Slovakia, small village on the borders with Poland. I grew up on a farm in a big family and I still love countryside and mountains a lot. My maternal language was Horal dialect what is mix mainly of Slovak and Polish language but it consists of many old Slavic terms. This fact helps me to understand some phrases from Slavic languages and it also helped me a lot to learn Serbian. After passing bachelor examination of Culture studies I decided to get more practice in culture field. I decided to go to work abroad as an EVS volunteer, my sending organisation is Stanica Žilina-Záriečie.

At the moment, I work as an EVS volunteer in Belgrade in culture center Rex, which is settled in the old downtown. At present, half of my residence passed but there is still half of year before me.

Until now I have worked on many different projects and have obtained a lot of new experience. By sequel in this blog I would like to share with you some of my experiences, positive impressions and images of my friends and colleagues.

Hope you will enjoy my posts and attachements … feel free … or freakly … to comment them!

Marian Söderholm at ufaFabrik, Berlin

Today I took my bike to work for the first time. I say my bike, it’s actually my housemate’s mountain bike, which I have borrowed and on which I managed to acquire a puncture on during my first ride in Berlin. But I didn’t let that stop me. After a relatively long snoozing-session this morning, I got up earlier than usual, poured some strong coffee down my throat and set off in the chilly wind. I turned up 20 minutes early to work, red-cheeked and vitally energised. Berlin is a very cycle-friendly city, and I have a feeling there will be more cycling adventures for me in the near future. I have been promised a tour to the lakes in Western Berlin accompanied by my good friend Andy and a thermos of hot soup this weekend. Let’s hope it doesn’t rain.

Today I will be conducting my first two interviews on the theme ”ecology in the ufaFabrik”, which is quite exciting. Not only will I be practising my interviewing skills, I will also get to sit down with a lot of people in the organisation that I usually wouldn’t get the chance to talk to, and find out more about their work and ideas on how to develop their ecological and environmental impact on a day-to-day basis. This is a perfect task for me, I think, because of my interest in the topic and the chance to do my own research and brainstorm about how to improve the ecological aspects of a cultural organisation. In June this year there is a conference/workshop weekend in Paris about this very topic; sustainability in cultural centres. I hope I can go, because I think it would be an amazing experience, and also exremely inspiring, not to mention the possibilities of networking with cultural types from all over Europe who are interested in the same subject.

Speaking of international travel and meetings, it turns out I will be going to Budapest together with my supervisor for the Trans Europe Halles meeting in May, which I am extremely excited about. I wanted to go last year, when I was at the TEH office, but I didn’t have the funds. I am glad to have the possibility to go this year, and I expect it will be a joyous and very interesting event. Sadly, I will be travelling back to Sweden straight from Budapest. It dawned on me the other day when I was discussing having a goodbye party at ufaFabrik with my supervisor, that time is speeding past at a crazy rate. The Budapest meeting and my impeding return to Göteborg seemed so far away in the beginning; after all, four months is a long time. Now that my final weeks here are closing in, I am determined to make the most of the time I have left. I think it’s been going pretty well so far.

I’m in the office at the moment, listening to German radio. Morrissey is singing; Burn down the disco, hang the DJ, and I recall my sweetly rebellious teenage years. On the topic of time flying, this bout of nostalgia seems somehow appropriate. I’m all grown up now, going on diverse adventures in Europe all by myself. Who would have known? Well, I think I always did know somehow, but now that I’m here the whole situation feels wildly surreal yet strangely familiar at the same time.

P.S. My German homework this week is to find some funny German jokes. Got any up your sleeve? My brother has warned me about the Germans’ terrible sense of humour. Email me at mariansoderholm[at]hotmail.com and prove him wrong!

Marian Söderholm at ufaFabrik, Berlin

Not only is this my first post here, but also the very first post on the Youth Exchange blog! I feel honoured, and quite excited. For the next two months I will be writing about my experiences during my internship at the ufaFabrik in Berlin, and also following fellow travellers who are experiencing similar but yet very different adventures in other countries. This is a space for public thought and personal reflection, and I hope it will inspire others to take the chance, if and when it presents itself, to travel and work in another country for a while, however short. It’s worth it, I promise.

So, what is this all about? Who am I, and why am I writing here? Let’s start with the basics: my name is Marian Söderholm and I am a student at Kulturverkstan in Göteborg, Sweden. I am studying the final term of a 2-year course in Cultural Project Management and currently one month into a 4-month internship at ufaFabrik - International Centre for Culture and Ecology - in Berlin, Germany. I am 25 years old, 5′6” and I have, together with my colleague Martin, founded an Emergency Chocolate Money box in the office where we work.

Here at the ufaFabrik I am involved in local promotional work for the theatre, music, cabaret and comedy performances we stage every week. I also assist in other projects, such as editing the website, writing articles and EU applications, working on premiere evenings and exploring the potential of visibility through social media and cultural networks. I am also running my own projects within the ufaFabrik – at the moment doing research and conducting interviews about environmental policy and innovation, and finally writing blogs and reports for my school back in Sweden (which now, for some reason, feels like a million miles away). And, to top it all off, I work at the Kinderbauernhof – the Children’s Farm – one day a week, cleaning rabbit cages and feeding Rudi and Rosa, the two largest and friendliest pigs I have ever met.

I have, as I mentioned, been in Berlin for just over one month now. During this time I have experienced snow, sunshine, early morning coffee and late night dancing, Turkish food markets and vegetable kebabs, birthday parties and bookshop parties, language lessons and street dance classes, new housemates and old friends, film festivals and German hip-hop, sculpture and S-bahns, theatre premieres and pony stables. And that’s not even half of it. The other day, a friendly bartender welcomed me to Berlin - the City of Choice, and every day it becomes clearer what he meant. I see people walking the streets here whose faces are old beyond their years, but I also see in Berlin a never-ending source of energy, creativity and youthfulness. My decision to come here will not be regretted. In two months’ time, when I return to Sweden, I will have a whole new network of friends and colleagues in the cultural business, and a whole new language to speak.

It was through my previous internship at the Trans Europe Halles’ Coordination Office in Lund that I discovered the existence of ufaFabrik, and also through TEH that I became involved in writing this blog. I have a lot to thank Trans Europe Halles for, but I think I also have to thank myself. For seeing and grasping opportunities when they arise, for taking the chance to move to Berlin and for not being afraid.

CHANGING ROOM is a two-year (2009-2010) mobility project that aims to test, study and evaluate a cultural professionals exchange and training programme within Trans Europe Halles, with the aim of it expanding into a EU wide initiative. Twenty-three TEH members will participate in CHANGING ROOM, hosting or sending cultural professionals and youth volunteers for periods of up to six months.  This ‘taste’ of mobility is intended to stimulate longer-term exchanges and lead to an increase in the permanent engagements of non-national workers by network members. Through the experiences of the exchange participants and their hosts, combined with workshops and a study by The Sibelius Academy (Finland), CHANGING ROOM will identify opportunities, issues and barriers to the mobility of cultural workers and then propose new ideas and forms for increasing mobility. The study will examine and identify the key factors which enhance and stimulate mobility, identify its benefits and how best to raise its value. It will also provide data on mobility within the network and aim to identify the key differences and similarities in working in culture across a sample of the 27 EU states.

This project has been funded with the support from the European Commission.

Changing Room is a project by TEH in collaboration with Melkweg & Silbelius Academy.