Woest is a cultural education festival for and by young people and offers a place for experimentation outside education. Woest is a unique partnership between education, culture providers and young people. In fact, what makes Woest unique is that young people themselves come up with new things that can make education more fun and better. The pupil's voice is always the starting point. Last months, young people and artists worked in equal co-creation on new ideas for cultural education.
During the festival week from 3 to 7 June, 3,500 young people will visit the festival in Zwolle. The target group will engage in arts and culture themselves by attending workshops.
In the evening, policymakers, teachers, parents and otherwise anyone who wants to know more about young people and cultural education got to experience for themselves the creativity of the young people.
No art
Now, of course, we are quite curious to know how such a thing works. Because young people are quite difficult to get them to move for art and culture. According to Carmen Munsterman, the festival's project manager, it is a question of commitment: 'We get them to work by really taking them very seriously and going forward from their own ideas. It may be about art and culture, but you really don't have to use those words. Often they don't realise at all that they are involved in art and culture. When they make films, they are being creative, but the association with art is not there for them.'
Why not mention the word art? According to Carmen, most young people have very dusty associations with it: 'Then it's about paintings, sculptures, museums, boring. So sometimes you have to reload that concept of art in their minds, by letting them experience it in a different way, by letting them engage with it in a different way. So that they experience how much fun it can be if they can express themselves in it.'
Blind date
She cites an example: 'Young people came up with the plan to make a 'blind date maze'. So that didn't start with: 'we want to do something with theatre or dance', but that started with brainstorming, with each other. Then it became about senses, about sounds, about meeting each other. That's where art comes in naturally, because you start shaping it. There is an artist who contributes ideas, there is music. But they always think of it themselves first. Then the artist develops it further. Then the young people test it again and give feedback. In this case, they wanted it to be more exciting, there could be game elements, there could be competition'.
Owner
Hence the theme of this year's edition of Woest: 'The Human Being at Play', which thus also becomes the starting point for what can be renewed in education: 'Young people themselves know very well what motivates them. So you get offerings that fit the target group much better. The enthusiasm is also so great because they are co-owners of that offer'.
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