A bridge between Africa and Europe, this Art-based project has given me a moment of release to my artistic younger self: Painting, dancing, acting, even singing with my very humble singing skills:) and most importantly, supporting participants in this 2-week long peoject.
Throughout the two weeks of this project, I lived with other participants and shared my time and joy with them. I loved exploring new places in Poznan, a place I have lived in for 8 months now and I call home. I have seen it through different perspectives as people come and go and tend to see different things in the same space. I say this because before this project’s participants joined us, we had 30 short-term volunteers who stayed with us for 48 days during the summer. With every participant or volunteer coming, I get fresh lenses from which I live and see Poznan. And as a team-leader for a group of our short-term volunteers and later a guide for YouGo project participants, I had every chance to shed light on various corners of my mind, from trying to understand and support, to being effective and efficient.
With other participants, we visited museums, namely the National Museum and the Potato Museum. I had the chance to contemplate beautiful paintings and explore Poznan’s history of being the Potato city; even the people are known as Pyry people (Potato people). And as the expert in organizing cultural nights, I helped Sherif to prepare for his presentation about Senegal for the community in Krag, who are always delighted to attend our cultural nights.
After Jaroslawski and Portugal’s theater experience, I find myself experiencing theater again: this time in a different form.
Preparing for our performance was an enjoyable process, it gave me time and space to reflect on how I stand, walk, talk, and the effect of that on how viewers perceive my actions, or my acting. This is yet another step in my journey into Theater and I look forward for more to come.
Our schedule throughout the 2 weeks was colorful and diverse and we got to spend time in Nature in a lovely place outside of Poznan where one of CIM Horyzonty generous friends invited us to her house in the woods to practice art in nature: a perfect combination. I also got to meet the president of Poznan on one of our walks in the city.
