The youth festival which we have been running since 2009 is designed to meet the aims of Most Mira:
To build a bridge of understanding and tolerance between the
young people of the Prijedor Municipality using the arts in a spirit of creative collaboration and participation.
The aims of the festival are to:
- Enhance opportunities for children and young people from the Prijedor
area to engage with each other. - Create an independent social and cultural space that is open and appealing to all.
- Give young people a chance to choose from a wide-range of creative activities that facilitate collaboration.
- Introduce new forms of participatory activities combining different creative disciplines, including visual arts, drama, music and dance.
- Provide children from all families (chiefly Serb, Croat and Bosniak) with the chance to do things together, since they are separated from each other both at school and at home.
- Build an atmosphere of shared fun and laughter.
The festival consists of five days of workshops in Art, Drama, Circus skills, Dance, Music and Media and one ‘festival day’ where there is a performance by the participants. Most Mira is developing the format from year to year, so the exact length of the workshops and what we provide varies slightly from year to year.
The methodology that we use is participatory wherever possible, so that all involved have an input into what at the festival: for example Most Mira volunteers are responsible for designing their workshops within the parameters of the festival aims and theme; and the children are encouraged to choose the activities that they participate in as far as possible.
The ideas for the creative workshops originally came from a set of sessions held in a few of the schools in the Prijedor Municipality in 2007 to establish what opportunities already existed in terms of creativity and culture and which new ones were most in demand. Most Mira conducts an in-depth evaluation of the Festival every year, using a number of methods in order to learn and improve the engagement and experience for all participants.
