In December 2022, the 7th edition of the Towards Collaborative Practices forum took place in Ioannina, Greece, a cute town bordered by a large lake where seagulls can be as friendly as taking food from your palm, and brown bears are said to visit the surroundings in winter.
Gathering around 60 participants, the event explored how youth work can tap into social entrepreneurship, digital and social innovation. Among many group activities, lots of networking, practice sharing, and group coaching, the event also had a special focus on local social initiatives which were explored through study visits around town. It also brought on the stage many stories of successful social entrepreneurs who are finding their way into the world of social business, while harvesting the opportunities of the Erasmus+ and other European programmes targeting youth.
Picturise was invited to contribute visually and took the challenge to graphically record most of the content of the event. This was what we call a Drawathon, a drawing marathon across 3 days, with intense rhythm and lots of visual summaries. For the sessions taking place in the plenary, we used good ol’ analog tools (markers and foam boards), but we switched to digital when we split into different rooms for the parallel workshops or when we had to accompany the participants in their study visits to the different social businesses.
We were glad to see people gathering around, discussing, taking photos and, generally, in the breaks or at the end of the day, just sticking around the area behind the room where we were based, still munching on the content or asking us questions. We were also very happy that the organisers let some of the speakers who loved the visuals take the foam boars with their own stories at home.
PAPER
DIGITAL
Client: Youth@Work Partnership
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Delivering: Renata, Paul
