Museum of Holocaust in Sereď (21.11.-23.11.2022)
Last week of November, as part of our project History defines our future, was held a conference called Students with freedom #forever.
The name of the multi-genre conference is derived from the main idea and theme that was ubiquitous during the discussions, workshops, lectures and accompanying events during the three days of late November in the premises of the Holocaust Museum in Sereď.
The second project´s activity involved all project partners: Post Bellum, The Norwegian Centre for Holocaust and Minority Studies, and EDAH.
The conference seamlessly connected a block of art, journalism and stories, a block of modern education and a block of fundraising, management and marketing. Lectures and workshops together with lecturers were prepared for students of universities, and their teachers with a focus on teaching, art fields, journalism, mass media, culturology but also marketing or production. The Students and teachers from several cities in Slovakia and the Czech Republic signed up for the conference. They represented cities such as Nitra, Trnava, Bratislava, Banská Bystrica, Sereď but also from Prague and Brno.
Foreign participation was also taken care of by our lecturers in block of modern education, our Norwegian partners from the Norwegian Center for Holocaust and Minority Studies – Daniel Mohammed Ansari and Lars Petlund Breiby. The Norwegian team led a workshop and lecture called “Perspectives on teaching Holocaust”, and also presented its most widely used educational programe, “Sources and Individuals”.
Tomer Aldubi of the Israeli organization Fighting Online Antisemitism, who lectured on the fight against antisemitism on social networks and in the online space, also gave a lecture in this block. The lecture was followed by a workshop on the topic of practical detection and removal of online hatred.
The block of modern education was also strengthened by our colleagues from the Czech Post Bellum, Magdalena Benešová and Andrej Novik, with the original name of their lecture, “100+1 guaranteed edurecipes or we cook with PB”, cooked delicious recipes such as formal and informal education, how to start schools and what not to do or how to teach history differently and why it does not work.
On Monday, it kicked off the 1st day of the conference and also project History defines our future itself,, with a guided tour of the Museum of Holocaust in Sereď in both English and Slovak. This was followed by the official opening of the conference by the director of Post Bellum Mgr. art. Sandra Polovková, and the screening of the film Identity ES by director Alena Činčerová.
The 2nd day was fully launched from the morning with workshops and lectures, which simultaneously took place in the barracks of the Museum of Holocaust in each of the three blocks. In the block of modern education and in the block of fundraising, management and marketing, the participants still had new and different lecturers after every single lecture or workshop. The lecturers were representatives of the Stop Corruption, Ministry of Justice of the Slovak Republic, Cultural Contact Point, Museum of Holocaust, Post Bellum SK, Cesta von, FreeAndy Agency, StartLab and Darujme.sk. On the second day in Sereď, the evening program was a screening of OUR SPACE IN TIME: Jewish Short Films from V4 Countries and a discussion with the director of the Slovak film “GRACE” Ivana Laučíková.
Ivana Laučíková, Boris Németh and Soňa Gyarfášová were the only lecturers who led their block of art all the days. They continuously progressed each in their work together with their participants. Boris and his group worked on a reportage photo, Soňa and the group got acquainted with journalism, spoken word and connection with documenting witnesses in this form. Ivana with her group created short films, worked on audiovisual production.
The 3rd day in Sereď continued as the previous day with lectures and workshops, and in the end, the block of art was presented by its work during the official end of the 1st year of the Conference Students with freedom #forever. The outputs from this block are published on our Facebook and Instagram profile Post Bellum.
We owe the organization of the conference not only to all the participating lecturers, the staff of the Museum of Holocaust in Sereď, the members of the civic association Post Bellum, the participants of the conference, but also, last but not least, the socially responsible Foundation O2, which financially supported us.
Photo: Michal Hradský