TRACER - Transformative Roma Art and Culture for European Remembrance is a project funded under the European Commission's Citizens, Equality, Rights and Values (CERV) programme. The aim of the project is to involve groups of Roma and non-Roma youths and teenagers in Italy, Portugal and Poland in the construction of a shared memory of the holocaust of Sinti and Roma minorities in Europe.
In these months the groups of young leaders continued the research, reflecting and re-elaborating the historical contents collected in relation to the Holocaust and the history of Roma people.
Their work produced:
From 14th to 18th May some of the young leaders of the TRACER project will meet in Poland to get to know each other, share their local activities, and visit the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum.
The international group of young people from Portugal, Italy and Poland will also participate on 17th May in the international seminar "Crossing Auschwitz. A journey of memory through art and objects between past and present" that will be hosted by the Italian Cultural Institute in Krakow.
"Crossing Auschwitz. A journey of memory through art and objects between past and present" is the title of the international seminar that will be held in Krakow on 17th May at 5.30 pm.
The event attended by representatives of all project partners is hosted by the Italian Cultural Institute in Krakow and is open to the participation of interested audience (teachers, university students, stakeholders, etc.).
In Italy, Portugal and Poland, the work of the young leaders continued during these months.
Young people are carrying out research and documentation activities on the themes of the holocaust and the history of the Roma people.
In doing so, each group also conducted interviews with some significant witnesses and experts including:
The 6 local groups of young people who will work within TRACER project have been set up. They will collect documentation on the history of the Roma and Sinti people, narratives about the Holocaust and the Roma genocide (Porrajmos) to discover what connects Roma communities to each other and to Europe.
Reclaiming a sense of history through the memory of Porrajmos so that policies directed towards discrimination are no longer possible: this is the theme that connects Tracer project groups' actions in the different territories.
Below the links to the news
Are now available the video and other materials of the conference "Art and Culture for Narrative and Inclusion. Presentation of the European project Trasformative Roma Art and Culture for European Remembrance".
Link to the video recording https://youtu.be/FaEMQtSpHgM
Are now available the video and other materials of the conference "Roma Art and Culture for European History: from the Porrajmos to European Citizenship. Suggestions from the TRACER project".
The conference "Art and Culture for Narrative and Inclusion. Presentation of the European project Trasformative Roma Art and Culture for European Remembrance" will be held on 25 October at 4.30 p.m. at the University of Florence (teaching facility la Torretta).
The conference "Roma Art and Culture for European History: from the Porrajmos to European Citizenship. Suggestions from the TRACER project" is in the programme of the International History Festival and will be held at the Department of Educational Sciences of the University of Bologna on 20th October at 4.30 pm.
The development of the project led local groups to involve several classes of students aged 12 to 16 in a didactic workshop on the genocide of the Roma and Sinti people during World War II. During the workshop (10 hours for each class), the different local groups designed participative and interactive ways to involve and engage students, using videos and direct testimonies, interviews with members of the Roma and Sinti community, as well as the young leaders' narration of their trip and experience in Auschwitz-Birkenau.
From January to June 2024, the young people involved in Tracer project activities showed the artistic products realized during the workshops at several public events.
Tracer's recent activities have also involved teachers and school staff in Poland (Oswiecim), Portugal (Braga and Figueira Da Foz) and Italy (Bologna, Florence, Naples).
Each local group composed of young leaders and the representatives of partners organizations, carried out a 10-hour face-to-face training in which different topics were addressed: the history of the Roma people and the Porrajmos, the deconstruction of stereotypes, the shared construction of paths to combat prejudice in the present.
In these months in Italy (Modena, Firenze e Napoli), Poland (Oswiecim) and Portugal (Braga and Figueira da Foz) artistic workshop took place.
In the course of the activities young people learned specific artistic techniques that helped them to realize in their countries and cities an artistic product (graffiti, booklet on the history of Roma people, theatre, short animated film…) with an antidiscrimination message useful to preserve the memory of the holocaust of Sinti and Roma minorities in Europe.
