School of Art, Design, Graphics and Clothes Zabok (Croatia) has become one of the 105 schools whose projects were awarded in the 2011 project competition of the Academy of Central European Schools (ACES) whose overall theme was: “Building bridges in societies - volunteer in your communities”.
Together with the School of Art from Sarajevo ( Bosnia nd Herzegovina) and Liceul de Arta from Buzau (Romania) the project „Telling a Story“ was applied to the contest and was successfully accepted by the ACES board.
Telling a Story is the project within which students from these three countries will collect, illustrate and publish typical or forgotten stories of their communities in a booklet titled „Telling a Story“. The stories published in the booklet will be told to the students by the people who live in old people's homes in their communities.
The project's main goal is to establish contacts and cooperation between schools and old people's homes, that is, to broaden the volunteering experience of the students by visiting and spending time with elderly citizens of their communities. However, through this project students from three different countries who all attend art schools will also exchange experience and knowledge among themselves thus building bridges outside their own countries. The stories will be heard and then retold in a new way by all participants, young and old, as an inspiration to all of us to have an open mind and open heart to things we have already labelled as outdated and irrelevant.
„The most basic and powerful way to connect to another person is to listen. Just listen. Perhaps the most important thing we ever give each other is our attention….“
Rachel Naomi Remen