The project "Expressions in Dialogue: Innovative youth work practices on refugee inclusion through Living Libraries" appears as a need from youth organisations directly addressing the refugee cause from diverse realities in Europe to create innovative youth work tools for both:

1. supporting the inclusion of young migrants and refugees strengthening the sense of belonging to the hosting communities;
2. mainstreaming intercultural dialogue and de-construct prejudices through the implementation of Living Library actions in order to encourage interaction bringing communities together.

The project proposes to work for, with and by youth migrants and refugees together with youth workers from diverse communities around Europe to develop innovative practices on refugee inclusion through human rights education and Living Library methodologies.

The main target of the project is to work for, with and by youth migrants and refugees together with youth workers and practitioners from the partner organisations.

Each organisation appointed a project coordinator responsible of the communication and the management of the local groups. Coordinators attended the three Transnational Meetings and facilitated the work of the local groups.

The Training Organisation Trajectorya MTÜ is the European Coordinator of the project

• MTÜ Trajectorya (Estonia) - Coordinating Organisation

Besides AHEAD, this Strategic Partnership project is implemented by the organisations of the consortium:

• Young Effect Association (Italy)
• House of Europe in Rhodes (Greece)
• VYRE – Voices of Young refugees (France) 

• WeOrganisation (the Netherlands)
• ArteWeda (Poland)
• AHEAD - Association of Human Rights Educators (Catalonia)
• MTÜ Trajectorya (Estonia) - Coordinating Organisation (Estonia)

Expressions in Dialogue is structured through actions at Local and European level.

Coordination Meeting: The first Phase included a Coordination meeting with each partner representative. The two days meeting of Coordinators took place in September 2018.

Local Coordination Teams: As result of this first encounter, Local Coordination Teams were created by each partner.

Capacity Building: The training course, as part of this project, takes place in Tallinn. The Capacity Building is specially addressed to the team members responsible for implementing the Living Library actions in each partner-country in frames of the “Expressions in Dialogue” project.

At the training course, the national teams of partner-organisations gain competences in preparation implementation and evaluation of the Living Library event.

But not only that. The educational part of the training course provides knowledge, skills and and develops attitudes of participants in Intercultural learning and social inclusion, which is very important for the work back home dealing with the human books, facilitators, librarians and everyone involved in the running of the Living Libraries.

After implementation of the Living Libraries by the partner-organisations, the participants will meet again in Barcelona in autumn to share their experiences, their work as teams and create materials for the common web platform focusing on practices of inclusive youth work. Living Library will be presented as well there as one of the tools for inclusion of young migrants and refugees.

Local Living Library Events

After the Capacity-Building training course (in February 9-16 in Tallinn), all the partners organisations were busy with the creation of the active group committing to organise their local actions – Living Library – and were doing necessary preparations for implementing Living Library event locally. This preparation includes, of course, logistical and technical preparation, but more importantly, finding and preparing the Human Books (“the catalogue”) and dissemination of the invitations and calls for the Living Library event.

All the partners advanced a lot in this process and as a result 5 Living Library local events were planned to take place between May and June 2019. Finally, as a big success and engagement of the local teams 8 Living Library events took place:

• On the 2nd and 3rd of May – We Organisation (in Hague, the Netherlands);
• On the 11th of May – House of Europe (Rhodes, Greece);
• On the 1st June – AHEAD (Barcelona, Catalonia);
• On the 8th of June – Young Effect Association (In Magenta, Italy);
• On the 15th of June – AHEAD (Barcelona, Catalonia);
• On the 20th of June – by Trajectory@ (Tallinn, Estonia);
• On the 12th of July – House of Europe (In Athens, Greece).

In parallel to the event in Italy, the Expressions in Dialogue Coordinators’s meeting took place in Magenta (Italy) on  7th to 10th June 2019. This time each national coordinator attended together with one representative of the local Living Library team. The agenda included evaluation and sharing the results of local Living Libraries, that had already taken place and the progress of preparations of the ones, that were still to come.

The main impact of the project was a great opportunity to train AHEAD's team of youth workers on inclusion of young migrants and refugees.

The training activity and the development of the multiplier events motivated and supported the local team in the preparation, implementation and evaluation of the Living libraries in the public space in Barcelona.

As a result a coordination team has been created formed by youth workers both locals and of refugee and migrant background.

The team was responsible of training the different actors involved in the two living library events that were implemented in Barcelona. As a result the project continues with the title Biblioteca Vivent de la Ciutat Refugi (Living Library of the Shelter City)

The project allowed for a long term inclusion process of young refugees and migrants that had been living in Barcelona for few months at the time of the course.

Young migrants and refugees from Ghana, Western Sahara, Syria, Morocco, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Russia, Colombia, Perú participated in the preparation, implementation and evaluation of the project.

The process included a series of workshops organised on Wednesdays afternoon and Saturdays morning along a period of three month on issues linked to identity, sense of belonging, inclusion, participation and living library methodology.

The workshops were run in English, but as well in Spanish and Catalan languages as part of the inclusion process.

As a result of the project, a local catalogue of human books have been created, a team has been trained and several of them are now the core of the Coordination Team that will support the further development of the project beyond the European project.

Beyond the organisation's development and the synergies created with the local stakeholders the impact of the project had a direct impact al local level. The implementation of two living library events brought over 50 and 80 readers to each of the events. The desired impact over this public was therefore reached. An evaluation questionnaire was distributed to the readers after the events and the results underline the success in terms of deconstructing stereotypes and prejudices towards migrants and refugees that the methodology brought to the broad public.

The project at local level in Barcelona involved several stakeholders:

• The Catalan National Library: supported the project with the equipment, the venue and giving visibility and dissemination of the results.
• The Journalist Professional Union (Col.legi de Periodistes de Catalunya): Supported the visibility and dissemination of the result through its Service of Counselling service (Servei d'assessorament periodístic)
• The Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB): supported the project by proving translation and interpretation through the event by their students of the Interpretation Master. It had a very positive and deep impact on those that have participated in the project.
• The Resources Bank (Banc de Recursos de Ciutat Vella) supported the event with equipment and materials
• The Federation of NGOs for Global Justice (La Fede.cat) supported the project with the venue for the workshops along several months and visibility and dissemination of the results
• Diverse Non Gubernamental Organisations working with specific migrant/refugee groups (CEHDA, Sahara d'Empeus, CEA,...) supported the project by involving its members, the impact was very positive for them as the project allowed to meet other migrant communities.
• The Barcelona Municipality through its programme BCN Ciutat Refugi. The impact was to gain visibility among the citizenry as well as towards new comers.

At local level we counted with the support of the Press Counselling Service (Catalonian Journalists Union) that supported the project by producing the press release of the project and making the contacts with the Media.

Consult here the report on the dissemination of the events and its results. 

As a summary: The Press Counselling service counted a total of 38 impacts over the two phases of the campaign. The first was a press conference prior to the Living Libraries meeting on June 15. The second one did reference to all those impacts obtained as a result of sending the press release after the event of the 15th and within the framework of the world Refugee Day.

• The first phase echoed in local media with social and cultural interests, but also on institutional websites linked to the Barcelona City Council. 
• The second phase had a mediated impact on the editions digital media such as El Periódico.com and ABC.es. That goes possible because the shipping coincided with World Day of Refugee, of interest to the diary of journalists those days. This observation must be taken into account when organising actions in the future.
• The broadcasting of the radio interview with Xavier Baró within the program La Plaça dels Futurs (Radio Terrassa) has also provided a great one media outreach to the project. The programme was broadcast live on Radio Terrassa and deferred, two days later, to Ràdio Premià de Mar i Ona Digital (Girona).
• Social networks like Facebook and Twitter have revealed two of the supports of the most interesting and effective dissemination for any campaign communication of this project. We suggest enhancing actions a Twitter, a network where this project generates retweets and social debate between users, as we have verified from the hashtag #livinglibraries. 

The dissemination at international level was done through diverse projects implemented at international level where and the inclusion tools were presented. The project has been presented in the European Migration Forum organised by the European Commission and held in Brussels the 2nd -4th April 2019.

At Euro-Mediterranean level, AHEAD presented the project results as an example of youth work methodological tools to prevent extreme polarisation, focusing on de-constructing the hate speech and xenophobia towards refugees and migrants (Depolarisation Youth Work practices organised by AHEAD from the 12th to the 19th October 2019 in Tarragona.

From the 29th of September to the 5th October, the Innovation Development meeting took place in Coma-Ruga (Catalonia). The meeting in was hosted by one of the partner-organisations – the Association of Educators in Human Rights, AHEAD.

The meeting in Catalonia was though for people who were actively involved in the preparation, implementation and evaluation of the local Living Library event(s) in each partner-country. Each team of 4 people was composed by a balanced group of youth migrants and refugees as well as representatives of the hosting communities. They were as well representing diverse actors of the Living-Library-teams: Human Books, Facilitators, Librarians, Readers and Coordinators to join the meeting.

This meeting was part of the ongoing KA2 Strategic Partnership project “Expressions in Dialogue”, which explores Living Library methodology as tool for inclusion of refugees and migrant in Europe. During spring and summer of 2019, a number of local Living Libraries took place organised by the partner-organisations.

They were:

• On the 2nd and 3rd of May – We Organisation (in Hague, the Netherlands);
• On the 11th of May – House of Europe (Rhodes, Greece);
• On the 1st June – AHEAD (Barcelona, Catalonia);
• On the 8th of June – Young Effect Association (In Magenta, Italy);
• On the 15th of June – AHEAD (Barcelona, Catalonia);
• On the 20th of June – by Trajectory@ (Tallinn, Estonia);
• On the 12th of July – House of Europe (In Athens, Greece).

After the implementation of the Living Libraries, the representatives of all the teams got together to share their experience, challenges, solutions and talk about the process of preparation, implementation and evaluation of their local events, from perspective of the inclusion of refugees and migrants, who were involved as participants in all the roles within this process.

After that meeting and closing the Expressions in Dialogue project a Dissemination Meeting took place in  February 2020 hosted by our partners in Rhodes.

See the results here.

The local Living Library in Barcelona was possible thaks to the engagement of the Coordinators Team, the Librarians, Facilitators, Interpreters and specially to every and each Human Books with their live stories.

The Coordination Team in Barcelona

The materials about the Project as well as conclusions and recommendations will be shared with the wider public on the web page, which is under construction now. Soon we will happily share it with you.

Discover the whole Expressions in Dialogue Project here!

Dissemination on Media

Media Report