Integration and Food – Empowerment –
as part of the series of events Integration and Arts
22. 7. 2018
FOPSIM /

FOPSIM is happy to invite you at our half-day training event we are organising as part of Risk Change project. 

During this short training, four (4) artists from different backgrounds are going to share their experience and explain how arts helped them in the process, therefore providing examples and advice on how other people can learn from their experience. 

Artwork of our guest speakers will also be presented. 

Training: Integration & Arts, 25-May-2018 

Programme: 

  • 13:30 – Registrations 
  • 13:50 – 14:00 Welcome address 
  • 14:00 – 14:35 1st speaker – SPARK15 
  • 14:35 – 15:10 2nd speaker – Badereddin Elsaafi a.k.a BeLights from Rootz Island 
  • 15:10 – 15:30 coffee break 
  • 15:30 – 16:05 3rd speaker – Heba Alshibani 
  • 16:05 – 16:40 4th speaker – Jeni Caruana 
  • 16:40 – 17:00 Open discussion 

Location: 295 B, Constitution str., Mosta, Malta
Date: May 25th 2018
Time: 13.30 – 17.00
Participation Fee: NO
Registration: Required (maria@fopsim.eu or +356 2339 0137)
Coffee break provided 

RISK CHANGE: Integration & Arts – Introducing our Speakers 

25-May-2018: training event

On the 25th of May 2018, from 13.30 until 17.00, FOPSIM is organising an event about Integration & Arts. The event is part of the Risk Change project, a Creative Europe project aiming at supporting the mobilisation of people across countries ad highlighting the importance of arts in Integration in the society. 

The event will take the form of a training, where four (4) artists are joining us to share their experience of migration and how arts helped them. Our speakers team consists of a representative of SPARK15, an organisation that organises educational and cultural activities to motivate migrants involve in the society, education, and work. 

Mr. Badereddin Elsaafi, co-founder of Rootz Island & member of the Reggae Rajahs, who is himself a musician with the stage name BeLights. Mr. Elsaafi was born in Tripoli, Libya, however he was brought up in New Delhi, India. His path brought him in Malta in 2013 and he has been living here since then, under the UNHCR Subsidiary Protection Status. 

Ms. Heba AL-Shibani, a Libyan Television Producer, Photographer, and documentary filmmaker, is an experienced journalist who has work for several local and international news channels and agencies, while currently working in Malta as a Media & Communication Consultant. Ms. Heba moved to Malta, along with her family in 2014, due to Libyan civil war. She became a member of the Malta Photographic society and Malta Sound Women Network. Her photographic work aims at “telling stories through the lens and sharing her experience via social media to encourage more people to join Maltese civil society in an attempt to influence a change of perspective, and to bring the different point of views within the Libyan and Maltese communities closer to each-other, especially since they have a lot in common”. 

Last but not least, Ms. Jeni Caruana, how came in Malta in the late 1970’s and as she described, she “fell in love with the country, the sunshine – and a young man who later became my husband”. When she came in Malta, already an artist as she has studied art in the UK for six (6) years, found herself in a “friendly country, and most people speak English well, but still felt like a foreigner”. Art helped her integrate in Malta and now she teaches adults and exhibits her work, representing Malta both locally and internationally. In her words, thanks to her art she “still (feel like a foreigner), but now I see it as a positive feeling”. As she explains, “as the earliest form of communication that we know, The Arts transcend language and location, giving strangers a bridge to meet on and a window into lives we may otherwise find difficult to understand”. 

During our Risk Change (a #CreativeEurope project) event on 20th of July 2018, Mr. Steven Frigerio delivered a small exercise called #Empowerment. Upon teaming us up in 4 groups, he distributed randomly four files. Each file contained a paper with multiplication exercises. Two of the files had from one calculator, one file had two calculators and one had zero calculators. All groups had to find the answer for the sum of the multiplications distributed.

The first think to be noticed was that all groups had the same assignment, but one group had more tools to complete the task and one had less than the other two. The second observation was the way the team with the least means felt after they realised they were given less chances to complete the task. They felt angry and wronged. The next remark was that the other teams, did not notice that one team had less means, and therefore did not consider helping them.

At the aftermath of the exercise, we had some very interesting conclusions. First, the disadvantaged group felt wronged mainly from the instructor who for them represented the government, for not allowing them their chance in equal opportunities. The second is that sometimes, disadvantaged groups do not how to reach out for help to their fellow-citizens and that people sometimes do not realise that someone close to them might be in need of some help.

What we kept from this exercise is that we need to be more open to each other and raise awareness of problems we face. The first step towards the solution of a problem is to recognise there is a problem and the second to openly discuss about it.