SALTO training course “Eutopia – Diversity in changing Europe” in Kosovo and Latvia

Eutopia - Diversity in a Changing Europe was a long-term creative lab for rethinking approaches to diversity in youth work.

The aim of the lab was to provide youth field professionals with an opportunity to explore the complex and diverse realities of young people in a changing Europe and to prepare to better respond to those realities by applying values-based perspective of diversity and reshaping their youth work practices.

The objectives of the lab were:

• to create a community of learners ready to engage in a challenging, self-reflective, long term, dynamic learning process;

• to identify the relevant socio-political and cultural conditions that influence the lives of young people on local and European level;

• to explore the contexts in which young people grow up today, and critically evaluate the current youth work responses to them;

• to understand reasoning and motivation behind young people’s views and attitudes, discover how opinions are formed and encourage critical thinking;

• to challenge the concept of diversity, exploring it based on a values-based, rather than from a normative policy perspective;

• to develop the most relevant competences for reconsidering and reshaping youth work practices that fit the current challenges;

• to incorporate principles of slow youth work in diversity related practices;

• to discover opportunities to incorporate values- based approach to diversity within Erasmus+ activities and to support international cooperation among participants.

Eutopia - Diversity in a Changing Europe is a creative, analytical and critical experiment which lasted six months. It brought to life to old concepts and captured it all in a dynamic tool, co-created by all participants. It is comprised of four elements:

 • 1st part: Home Lab for Introduction – online learning process consisting of 24 hours of individual guided work from July to August (participants were required to dedicate about 3 hours a week for online learning throughout the summer)

• 2nd part: Lab for Critical Analysis – challenging, exploring and developing concepts in Kosovo, from 8th to 14th of September 2018

• 3rd part: Piloting Lab for Creativity and Experimentation – personal labs of participants in their local communities

• 4th part: Designing Lab – lab for tools and approaches in Latvia, from 9th to 13th of December 2018

This project was organized by the Latvian National Agency and SALTO Suth-East Europe Resource Center.