Young people are going to the cinema less and less, consuming audiovisual content mainly on social media and streaming platforms, often without the opportunity to engage with it critically. Youth from marginalised groups also faces social isolation and limited access to culture and education. Cinemas and cultural spaces are still not sufficiently accessible to them, physically or socially, and rarely give them a say in what happens there.
The aim of Seen and Heard is to improve access to film culture and education for young people from marginalised groups in Slovakia. Together with them, and with schools, cinemas and public institutions, we want to create and test inclusive models that cinemas and schools across Slovakia can use, and to advocate for accessibility in culture to become part of public policy and funding schemes.
Activities
Participatory Planning
Young people from marginalised groups will be directly involved in shaping the programme of the Inclusive Film Festival. Through focus groups and workshops in our youth community space, the “klubovňa”, we will identify together the barriers that prevent them from accessing culture and education, and look for ways to remove them.
Inclusive Film Festival
The festival is the project’s main platform, where we test inclusive formats in practice. All festival films will be made accessible with audio description for blind and visually impaired audiences and subtitles for deaf and hard-of-hearing audiences. The festival includes an accompanying programme, workshops for cinemas and educators, and meetings with representatives of the cultural sector, education and public institutions on how to achieve systemic change. Young people from marginalised groups also work at the festival.
Study Visit to Norway
Our team will attend the Norwegian cinema conference in Bergen, organised by our partner association Film & Kino. We will present the Caring Cinema platform there and draw inspiration from Norwegian experience with cinema support, accessible relaxed screenings, and advocacy.
Methodologies and Recommendations
Based on the findings from the focus groups, the festival and our cooperation with the Norwegian partner, we will develop a methodology for cinemas, a methodology for schools, and public policy recommendations. All outputs will be freely available on the Caring Cinema platform.
Campaign and Advocacy
Through a nationwide campaign involving other cinemas across Slovakia, we will raise awareness of the importance of accessible culture and youth participation. We will present the project’s outputs to the City of Košice, the Košice Self-Governing Region and the Slovak Audiovisual Fund, with the aim of making accessibility part of their funding schemes.
Partners
- Film & Kino, Oslo, Norway
- Keď môžem pomôžem, Košice, Slovakia
Thank You for Your Support
The project ‘Seen and Heard: Youth Participation and the Right to Culture’ is supported by the EEA Civil Society Fund in Slovakia programme, financed by the EEA Financial Mechanism 2021–2028. The programme is administered by the Ekopolis Foundation in partnership with the Open Society Foundation Bratislava and the Carpathian Foundation.
