the encounter between religions and secular thinking systems through comics for the integration of...
TRANSCRIPT
The encounter between religions
and secular thinking systems through
comics for the
integration of
immigrants
Valori comuni is an Eurodialog project, supported by Lai-momoin partnership with Africa e MediterraneoGrupo ComunicarL’Afrique dessinéeTranslitLe ComptoirACS - Associazione di Cooperazione allo SviluppoAgronomi Senza FrontiereFumo di China
The project has been co-funded by the European Commission, Directorate-General for Justice, Freedom and Security, within the INTI program.
It is also funded by:Fondazione CarisboRegione Emilia RomagnaRegione Veneto
Objectives of the project
• The project aims to make easier the multi confessional coexistence between immigrants and receiving communities.
• The project has the specific purpose to highlight the points of convergence between different (secular and religious) thought systems, identified by experts in religions, social and philosophical studies, and to convey them through a communication action (5 comics and a course book for schools).
Project’s beginning The “Common values” project took its first step few years ago from a clear idea:The necessity for children to understand that the values of the different thoughts have common bases related to the evolution of the history .
This idea seemed to gain more and more relevance not only in Europe, where the migratory flows made and make the confront with foreign cultures direr and direr, but also in a world that has to face the unexpected return of the sacred together with deep and river religious conflicts.
Project Description• TARGET: youths, especially teenagers and
preteenagers.• MEDIUM: in order to communicate these
concepts in a catchy and attractive way, we have chosen comic art.
• HOW: with a partnership of Italian, Spanish, French and Belgian organizations that started a multi subject work backed by a scientific committee and by a team which included European and African author, artists and experts in intercultural didactics and in dialogue among religions.
The values
A Scientific Committee has selected five values that various religions and secular thought have in common:
Forgiveness as highest form of loveNon-violence Respect of the otherCondivisionNon-discrimination
The comic albums and the guide
After being located, the values have inspired five prose tales, transformed then into scripts for comics albums, whose fulfilment has been committed to professional drawers of the association L’Afrique dessinée.
The comics albums have been published together with a didactic guide, whose aim is to supply teachers with some tools and materials useful to handle the comics in the didactic work.
The publications
After being located, the values have inspired five prose tales, transformed then into scripts for comics albums, realised by the professional drawers of the association L’Afrique dessinée.
The comics albums have been published together with a didactic guide, whose aim is to supply teachers with some tools and materials useful to handle the comics in the didactic work.
Didactic activities
Didactic experimentations in schools: in the four partner countries various activities have been developed, including comics workshops, creative activities and debates.
Exhibition of the comics. It goes over their stories and delves into matters analysed in the guide, through a didactic and interactive path. Some set ups are going to be presented in Bologna in 2006.
L’Appello
Storia:Pascale Fonteneau
Disegni: Pat Masioni
Sceneggiatura: Christophe N’galle
Edimo
Valore: l’amore, il perdono
L’Appello
La riserva
Storia: Thomas Gunzig
Disegni: Faustin Titi
Sceneggiatura: Christophe N’galle Edimo
Valore: la non-violenza
Hisham e Isotta
Storia: Carl Norac
Disegni: Simon Mbumbo
Sceneggiatura: Christophe N’galle
Edimo
Valore: il rispetto dell’altro
Se mi segui intorno al mondo…Storia: Carl Norac
Disegni: Fifi Mukuna
Sceneggiatura: Christophe N’galle Edimo
Valore: la generosità, la condivisione
Compito a casa
Storia: Abdourahman Waberi
Disegni: Chrisany
Sceneggiatura:Christophe N’galle
Edimo
Valore: la non discriminazione
Didactic activities. Evaluation
The didactic activities have proved the great power of comics in conveying complex concepts through the presentation of concrete situations, near to the students’ experience.
The workshops with the cartoonists have focused on the creative process of the comics realisation (media education activities), especially interesting for some students who where not used to this medium (not so developed in Italy)
The “Common values” project addresses a Europe which is discovering to have become a multi–confessional as well as a multi–cultural community.
Young people are of course our future and the most affected by social integration difficulties. It’s the everyday experience of their social identity rejection that often drives them to reclaim the right to live the religion as a fundamental dimension of their social and cultural identity.
The social context
Methodologies
The use of comics, one of the most effective and communicative applied art, to reach a public of teenagers.
The collaboration with Africa comics drawers who, as migrant themselves, communicate the intercultural message with special sensibility and involvement
Methodologies
A multi-disciplinary approach: we intended to make interact the different subjects that pick out religion as study matter. Therefore, besides the theologians, we entrusted literary men of different origin and religious beliefs, scholars of social sciences and right and comics artists, fellow members themselves of the foreign groups who settled in Europe.
Partners’ tasksEurodialog (Belgium): conception, coordination, project manager
Lai momo/Africa e Mediterraneo (Italy): coordination of the whole work, publishing and pedagogical facets.
L’Afrique dessinée (France): “artistic” partner.
Translit and Grupo Comunicar (Spain): coordination of the actions of the project in Spain.
Le Comptoir (Belgium): relations with writers
EU Financing
The European Commission (General Direction Justice Freedom and Security) has represented the main financer of the project: through the INTI – Integration of migrants program it has shelled out the 80% of the project’s budget.
Finding stocks to co-finance the project, so that we could cover all the expenses, has then been necessary.
Co-financingRequest of private and public funding. We obtained financing by the Fondazione Carisbo, by the Regione Veneto, by the University of Padua and by the Regione Emilia Romagna. In some cases we have suggested the financers to plan some additional specific activities, which have allowed a further project’s development in local areas.
Distribution and sale of publications. A focused publishing strategy is currently being planned, trying to elude book market’s current difficulties.
The new Project
The Common Values game
"Common Values" is a collaborative game that uses tolerance models based on religious and secular systems of thought, with the ultimate goal of identifying similarities and differences between different thought systems, i.e. religious beliefs and secular approaches such as human rights and other fundamental European values.
It is an action of ICT online learning intercultural pedagogy, based on a hard copy (paper) game and a multiplayer online game, which is both web-based and mobile phone-based.
The "Common Values" game focuses on the common aspects of different systems of thought.
Through an interactive question & answer game, the players will be called on to collaborate in transnational teams aimed at promoting peace-culture models through the implementation of dialogue between different religions and cultures now present in Europe.
The new Project
The Common Values game
Contacts
Eurodialog
Square Ambiorix, 71000 Bruxelles (BE)
Tel.: 0032 2 2307348
www.valeurscommunes.org