inspira - espira: creative research process with teenagers

Madrid

March 17 to April 28, 2021

The ‘inspira –espira’ project proposes a creative research process with teenagers to empower child participation. The proposal arises with the aim of collaborating/accompanying an initial group of 19 teenagers whose members come from different leisure, educational and child participation groups organized by Save the Children in Seville, Melilla, Leganés, Madrid, Illescas, Valencia, Barcelona and Barakaldo. The goal of the project is to develop observation, listening, research, action and enunciation skills particularly around the issue of education and protection, which are strategic objectives developed by the Strategic Plan of Save the Children International and Save the Children Spain for the period 2022-2024.

During the months of March and April 2021 we accompany adolescents in their immersion process into a trained and reflective dialogue around their topics of interest. Through a creative research process they will reflect on what happens to them and develop their observation and listening skills as well as their critical and reflective capacities. Together, we will nurture their ability to innovate, invent, create and break with what they consider susceptible to transformation.

The participants contribute as active agents to the situational analysis of children's rights in the sphere of education and protection, thus forming part of the diagnostic team from the beginning. This process tries to favor the respect towards their ideas, voices and opinions as representatives of a broader group in the face of Save the Children’s own structure, its strategic and annual planning and the design of their programs.

As part of this process, the proposal intends in turn to provide the participants with inspirational models, expanding their references through good practices examples coming from artistic, social and activist projects (within the framework of the themes of education and protection) which involve children, girls and teenagers.

This process of research and creative action, led by the youngest, is understood as necessary preparation towards the inclusion of girls and boys in different strategic planning processes in the form of future children advisory committees that can participate and influence the strategic plan of the country in meaningful ways. The intervention and accompaniment of hablarenarte is understood as a chapter in a broader and ambitious 3-year process aimed at increasing and improving the meaningful participation of children and adolescents in the early stages of programming, giving their voice a structural weight in the organization and in its processes.

We work with pedagogical and creative tools to promote processes of empowerment, participation, mobilization and social action in the participants. We put into action relational, analytical and artistic tools with which we wish to promote the development of critical awareness in children and adolescents to identify their problems, seek solutions from the possibilities available in their communities. We thus begin a path towards the implementation of children’s participation, in turn promoting their cohesion as a group and its growth through the generation of a space in which life in common is valued.