Idea

Quest for New Ideas and New Intercultural Practices

Europe has become today an arena of sudden increased activity of anti-Semitic, xenophobic and racist attitudes and ideologies. It is all the more characteristic that it happens simultaneously with a steady progress and extension of the influence of European integration (at least in bureaucratic and economic spheres). 

The process of unification and opening of borders need to be accompanied by growing tolerance, especially if no work on transformation has been carried out in the sphere of culture and mentality. Europeans have too long lived in closed national states, too many of them experienced religious conflicts, too many are entrenched in their own separate cultural identities (which are defended in the name of cultural variety), therefore the opening, experienced by them through European integration, globalization and migration, evokes in them frustration and attitudes radically averse to the Other. 

Additionally, there is an ongoing social crisis of the European multicultural society. It turns out that a dose of tolerance, which a decade earlier sufficed for peoples of various nationalities, cultures and denominations to co-exist in one body of society, today is no longer satisfactory. Moreover, it appears that European openness towards the otherness has been built, in many cases, on a concept of political correctness understood superficially and absolving them from any attempt for a deeper understanding and closeness to the Other. 

In this situation, the growing number of the Muslims in Europe, the inflammation of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, mounting unemployment, phenomenon of cultural ghettoes and still other circumstances have contributed to the breaking of the moral and political taboo regarding the Other, and louder become the voices resounding with radically particularistic and intolerant social and political programmes. Old ideologies are being resurrected on the Old Continent, and a historic dimension of the situation is most readable to the Europeans of Jewish origin. Anti-Semitism in Europe can not be discussed solely as a new occurrence, shaped by the current situation in the world. Nor can it be discussed as a phenomenon separated form the crisis of the multicultural society and connected with it radicalization of the attitudes towards the Other – the alien Jew, Muslim, Gipsy, Pole or Non-believer... The old European disease exists today on new conditions, characteristic for our times and dynamics of development. Therefore, we must seek new answers for the situation and new tools for overcoming it. 

Undoubtedly, the wave of growing anti-Semitism, xenophobia and other forms of intolerance needs to be opposed. One can and must fight it, stigmatizing all its indications, organizing manifestations and media campaigns, conducting widely understood research and monitoring of symptoms utilizing the most sophisticated available technology. 

Simultaneously, it is necessary to build affirmatively the “connective tissue” of the common European civil space, the ethos of cultural dialogue and open identity (which does not build its own self-expression and power through projection on the scapegoat and the exclusion of the Other, but through a culture of coexistence with the Other). 

The Borderland Foundation sees here its place and chance of using its many years experience in the affirmative building of the “connective tissue” of a diversified society acquired during our cultural and educational work in the borderland regions. 

The title of the program New Agora refers to the community space which is not a usual sum of separate features, but grows out from the wealth of separateness understood as unique quality. It determines for the cultures their point of juncture, the central place, the place of meetings, common work and dialogue. The borderlands are like the land crossed with the waters of rivers, whose inhabitants must unceasingly build bridges and seek alternative ways of forcing their way from one bank onto the other to be able to live and develop. Today, it is necessary to rephrase the question about rules and values which should organize life in such communities and about knowledge and methods of building bridges, i.e. relations with the Other. 

The New Agora Program proposes a cycle of activities concentrated on seeking for new ideas and working out new inter-cultural practices. It is realized in different places in Europe in a form of a Mobile Academy, engaging outstanding representatives of humanistic thought and Inter-Cutural Workshops, engaging the young, educators, social activists and artists. Special stress is laid on the forms of dissemination of the results of meetings and workshops as well as their continuation in local communities.

The New Agora Program is based on two different spheres of activity: 
reflective, the Mobile Academy and practical, the Inter-cultural Workshop.

Mobile Academy

The most important form of realization of the Mobile Academy is the Symposion New Agora, organized once a year, including 15-20 participants, each time in a different city of Europe. 

Mobile Academy engages outstanding representatives of humanistic thought in a debate over such matters as: sources of the growing wave of anti-Semitism and xenophobia in Europe; the crisis of multiculturalism and its resolution; the issue of identity after cosmopolitism and nationalism.

Inter-cultural workshop

The Inter-cultural Workshop is an educational and art work with groups of children and youth of different ethnical background, aiming at mutual recognition of the values, distinctions and the symbolic of cultures of the participants' origin. It is a search for the contemporary forms of the intercultural practice with young generations. 

Each workshop involves 40 young participants. For its preparation and running responsible is the Borderland Foundation, the organization with a lot of experience in such an artistic and educational work with youth. Besides, each workshop is realized in cooperation with a local partner and several other persons. 

The New Agora Program is based on two different spheres of activity: reflective – the Mobile Academy, and practical - the Inter-cultural Workshop. 

However, just as it happens in a real life both spheres tend to intersect and thus we would like to create some form of dialogue between them. We want young participants of the workshops to address their queries and problems to the participants of the Symposium; so that the latter are able then to get to know the results of young people’s work and refer to it their reflections or messages, resulting in a possibility of a point of juncture. 

The connection of these two spheres of cultural activity is an extremely important objective of the Program. On one hand, there must be an intellectual reflection on threats, barriers, and symptoms of social crisis in the contemporary Europe, on the other - a practice of educational activity for the young generation is indispensable. Wise reflection must be followed by cultural activity, especially in the sphere of children’s and youth’s education. Taking advantage of abovementioned experiences of the Borderland Foundation, and of our work methods based on music, plasticity, and theatre, we are going to work out such forms of action - the Inter-cultural Workshop - that will “translate” the effect of the debates into practical language of social activity. 

The Mobile Academy and the Inter-cultural Workshop are organized in different places in Europe, and thus focus on cultural uniqueness of the region where they are held.