Creative workshop: a format for cooperation between the Safer Internet Youth Forums of the Baltic Countries

For three years now, Lithuania has hosted the Safer Internet Youth Forum partially funded under the framework of the Connecting Europe Facility (CEF) as part of the European Commission's Better Internet for Kids strategy.

Date 2018-01-17 Author Lithuanian Safer Internet Centre
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National Safer Internet Centres (SICs), dedicated to the involvement of children and young people in the creation of a safer online environment, have been established in thirty member countries of the European Union under the Facility. Together with its partners, the Centre for Information Technologies in Education, coordinating the Lithuanian Safer Internet Centre, has followed European best practices in developing the Safer Internet Youth Forum and encourages young people to be active in creative activities on and about the internet.

Visual formats, such as photos, videos and video blogs, are the most appreciated by contemporary youth. In 2017, participants in the Safer Internet Youth Forum created a number of video reports, films, and social advertisement videos as part of a creative workshop which took place in August 2017 in Vilnius.

The creative workshop gathered together 30 participants in total: 20 members of the Safer Internet Youth Forum (aged 13 to 18, with five representing the Latvian Safer Internet Centre, five representing the Estonian Safer Internet Centre, and ten representing the Lithuanian Safer Internet Centre) and 10 adults: persons accompanying the young participants from Latvia and Estonia, the Lithuanian Safer Internet Centre team, and presenters.

The youth primarily shared good practice of the youth activities in Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia – click on the country links to see video resumes of their work.

Professional experts shared their experience on how to create social advertisements and films with the workshop participants and assisted the young people in the creation of professional social advertisements on safer and better internet issues. 
The experts presented a series of inspiring good practice examples along with a methodology for the creation of social advertisements. Following their presentations, the film experts held discussions on the rules, formats, solutions, key stages of creation of social advertisement videos, and gave the young participants a practical preparatory task. 

The activities associated with the creation of the social advertisements took place in various inspiring locations of Vilnius city. Discussion of the ideas and prospective video topics took place in an informal setting surrounded by the Belmontas landscape at the Filaretai Hostel, where the overseas participants stayed for the duration of the workshop. Film pre- and post-production activities took place at the Martynas Mažvydas National Library of Lithuania providing access to an event space, art space, cinema room and image processing room, allowing the young participants to work using professional film production and post-production equipment. The final day of the creative workshop featured an interactive educational programme at the Centre for Civil Education, including an overview excursion around the exhibition and educational tasks for the creative workshop participants. 

A formal awards event was held later that day at the Mabre Residence Conference Hall, where all of the authors of the social advertisements were awarded. Reflections on the films were shared by several experts, namely:

  • Liūnė Naujikaitė, the State Border Guard Service
  • Nerijus Kriaučiūnas, the Lithuanian Association of Non-Formal Education;
  • Petras Šlekys, Mozilla ambassador in Lithuania;
  • Mantas Pelakauskas, the European Commission representation in Lithuania;
  • Aida Vėželienė, the Martynas Mažvydas National Library of Lithuania.

An overview of all of the creative workshop activities is presented in the video tutorial, while the social advertisements created by mixed teams from the Baltic countries can be viewed here:

Photos of moments of the creative workshop taken by the professional photographer have also been made available in a video, while the entire video material of the creative workshop is available via the Baltic Safer Internet Youth Panel 2017 YouTube playlist.

The timing of the creative workshop was perfect, as it took place along with the creative online workshop of the Safer Internet Youth YouTube Channel Smartly on the Web, hosted by the Estonian Safer Internet Centre from May to November 2017. 

Join the Lithuanian creative team of the Youth Forum under the Baltic Safer Internet Project on Facebook at @sijfLT.

Find out more about the work of the Lithuanian, Latvian and Estonian Safer Internet Centres (SICs), including their respective awareness raising, helpline, hotline and youth participation services.

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