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STORY JAM: NEW NEIGHBOURS
2022 | Netherlands Film Festival | Utrecht, Netherlands
About
Storytellers United organises Story Jam: New Neighbours, in cooperation with Sound & Vision and the Netherlands Film Festival. During three days, five teams worked together in multidisciplinary teams under the guidance of coaches on new intercultural story prototypes. Each prototype casts a different light on the multicultural society of the Netherlands. Projects took form of a web experience, VR, performance, app or installation. All the projects were share publicly during the Netherlands Film Festival.
COMPLEMENTALITY
Jaqueline Zamora| Inna Borshch | Oyuna Kerssens
Kate Delbeke| Seyda Nur Gunes | Jiye Seoung-Yu
During the Story Jam we explored topics regarding new neighbours/ new comers and their process of integration.
We realised that integration is a two-way street.
It is not only the responsibility of the new neighbours to integrate, but also the old neighbours to welcome them… and one of the best ways to do so is by learning from each other’s context.
We want you to understand context as a separate thing from country or culture.
The context is the sum of values, skills and ways of doing things. Depending on the context you grew in, or the context you spend the most time in, you will develop certain qualities and skills that help you thrive in that context.
We created a participatory experience that focuses on understanding the narratives and choices of different contexts.
If you wish to participate, watch the 2 videos ahead and then, answer the questions.
CONTEXT A
CONTEXT B
CHOOSE 1 OF THE 2 CONTEXTS YOU WERE PRESENTED TO.
BASED ON THE CONTEXT YOU CHOSE, TRY TO ANSWER THE FOLLOWING SCENARIOS.
Imagine you go out of your apartment to put out the trash and you forget your keys. You try alternatives to get in but you don’t succeed. You see your neighbor next door with a tool kit, but you’ve never talked to him before, so…
What would you do?
A) Call a handyman, wait for his arrival and pay a high fee.
B) Ask your neighbour for help.
You meet a stranger in a cafe, you get along and chat for almost 2 hours. This stranger invites you to a party with his friends. What would you do?
A) Before you accept, you want to know when, where and who is coming.
B) You accept without hesitating and just go with the flow.
The weather is 28° degrees. You want to go for a swim. You find a beach that is 45 min away by bike and 15 min by car. What do you do?
A) Go to the beach by bike, why spend money when you can bike?
B )Call an uber, it’s pretty hot.
Now you must think, what is the purpose of these random questions?
Well, actually, what you are answering to, is choosing between:
Collectivism VS Indivisualism
Spontaneity VS Structure
Finding comfort in hustling VS Indulgence
Skills, attitudes and ways of doing things, we identify in all the context we explored.
We want to emphasise that no matter where you come from, meaning country or culture, it’s the context what really shapes us. Learning these different skills, attitudes and ways of doing things can help us thrive in more than one context and that’s the GOLD of multiculturalism.
This project began with the thought of:
‘‘Well I’m good at surviving chaos, but since I arrived here, I’ve had to learn how to relax, because everything is under control, I don’t need to be alert all the time, I can rest and have time for myself.’’
I hope you leave this page with something new to integrate into your life. Integrate the new neighbours, they, we, aren’t as different from you as you think.
My team mate Oyunaa, which loves denim, said:
“ We all wear jeans don’t we? We aren’t as different as we think we are”
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