On July 8th 2021 the partnership Photo FX had an OnLine Transnational project meeting. ‘Photo FX aims to provide young participants with the tools to give voice to their expressiveness, vision and personal interpretation of the world, with the purpose of social inclusion and awareness. The project has a special focus on young people with a physical and / or mental disability. So, how are we doing so far? We are doing good, but we can do better !

Early Vision Photo FX: ‘So Far So Good‘

Photo FX aims to provide young participants with the tools to give voice to their expressiveness, vision and personal interpretation of the world, with the purpose of social inclusion and awareness. The project has a special focus on young people with a physical and / or mental disability. Really looking forward progressing with the project. Expectations are currently met. Key Success Factors can be that there is a lot of room to experiment and create through the workshops we are going to do with the young people. Hope to get some valuable insights as regards the support tools which can be used for PhotoFX Instagram.

The key Success Factors of Photo FX can be that there is a lot of room to develop, experiment and create through the workshops we are going to do with the young people after the Summer of 2021: ‘We did get some valuable insights in our PhotoFX project:

Education, culture and youth policies play a central role in building a cohesive and supportive Europe, as can be seen in the Communication from the European Commission on the theme “Building a stronger Europe: the role of policies for youth, education and culture “(2018), which incorporates the conclusions of the Gothenburg social network and the European Council at the end of 2017, it is necessary and indeed urgent to put young people in a position to actively participate in civil life and politics, exploiting the potential of culture, learning, mobility, with the aim of giving them power and capacity to contribute to well-being, social and economic growth, and the diffusion of EU values of cohesion, inclusion and solidarity. PHOTOFX wants to contribute to the achievement of these strategic objectives through the establishment of a consortium of organizations that, by mutual agreement, seek to create a suitable environment for civic participation and active citizenship of young people through the use of photography and communication.

Participatory Photography
The PhotoFX partnership started at the beginning of 2021. The project duration is more or less 18 months. The consortium consists Association Ser Jóven (Spain), Social Cooperative La Speranza (Italy), Dutch Foundation of Innovation Welfare 2 Work (DFW2W – Netherlands), VIZIONER (Bulgaria) and Jó Palócok Egyesülete (Hungary). PhotoFX emphasizes participatory photography that consists of a practical use especially in the field of community development, public health and education, which combines photography with social action, and seeks to investigate through how individuals think about social issues.

Beneficiaries
• Young Europeans from 13 to 30 years old (target group)
• People with disabilities (indirect beneficiaries)
• Indirect beneficiaries: youth, students, youth workers, social workers, representatives of training and education
centers, NGOs, associations, experts, policy makers and other key stakeholders.

General objective
This proposal aims to provide young participants with the tools to give voice to their expressiveness, vision and
personal interpretation of the world, with the purpose of social inclusion and awareness, especially about the
conditions of discrimination suffered by people due to their physical and / or mental disability, promoting
co-creation processes in community interventions that use art for social transformation, placing participatory
photography as an artistic practice that favors awareness on social issues, within this framework participants are
asked to “represent their context, their community, their environment, from their point of view, taking pics, talking
about them, developing narratives.

Specific objectives
The project contributes to:
• fostering, through participatory photography, the creativity of the participants to express through photos their
vision of social inclusion;
• empowerment of young people through digital communication, to make them able to transmit their image of the
problems, challenges, opportunities, aspirations related to their environment, community and reality where they
carry out their daily lives;
• promotion of active citizenship, dialogue, mutual respect and awareness of young people on issues of social
relevance, with a focus on social inclusion of people with disabilities, through photography;
• transfer and dissemination of innovative practices at European level on issues related to social inclusion,
intercultural dialogue and active citizenship of young people;
• promotion of OER informal and non-formal education methodologies, tools and materials;
• promotion of active European citizenship among young people through their awareness of social inclusion, with
the perspective of breaking social barriers between “young people” and “people with disabilities”, as defined,
among other things, by the European Strategy for Disability 2014-2020. These objectives will be achieved through:
• Participatory photography manual;
• Toolkit for awareness campaigns on social networks