NAPA in East Greenland
NAPAs employees and the visual artist, Gudrun Hasle, went to Tasiilaq in East Greenland, in November 2020. We had a wish to help and guide the young in Tasiilaq to apply for funding for their own cultural projects, and to have them draw their dreams. We met with the the young that frequented the youth culture house Igdlo. Most of them had finished elementary school, and hadn’t continued their education from then on.
During a couple of days we spent time with the young people, and set up a presentation about the nordic opportunities for education and work (fx. like Nordjobbs), and their opportunities to make projects and apply for NAPAs Culture Funding Program.
The young guys dream was to be a terminal worker
During the second night, Gudrun Hasle held a workshop about dreams in the youth culture house Igdlo. Gudrun uses her art to ”express big and small everyday feelings through both simple imagery, and sentences, and words.” (Nuuk Art Museum)
After Gudruns presentation, the young started to paint their dreams, both big and small. It was everything from the dream boat to fishing, to have ones name written on a Hollywood star, and a young man painted a plane and wrote TERMINAL WORKER.
To turn dreams into reality
A worker at the youth culture house saw the boys painting and started to talk with him about his dream, and offered to help him make his dream into reality.
They then went to Majoriaq and talked with a student counsellor to hear what kind of opportunities he had, and what would be the smartest thing for him to do, to reach his dream of becoming a terminal worker. They were told that, he could start in Majoriaq, to improve his school grades.
The Igdlo-worker offered to help the young man refresh his math and danish, before he started Majoriaq. They then reached an agreement with the student counsellor, that for the next 14 days, the young man would arrive at Igdlo at 8am, make coffee and help with the chores, and then the worker would teach him math and danish, among other things.
Strengthen the individuals skills
The worker at Igdlo has a background as an educated teacher, and has worked for two years at Tasiilami Alivarpi.
His goal as an educational profile in the youth culture house, Igdlo, is “to see the individual students/users (of Igdlo) needs, and strengthen their skills, so that they can have the best life possible. And for me, the user, in this case, was matured and ready to get an education, and hopefully complete it, that is why, that was the part I had to help him with,” says the worker, Magnus Kristiansen from Igdlo youth culture house in Tasiilaq.
NAPA was happy to be able to help start up, the young mans dreams of the future, through the dreams workshop.
Whom have we reached:
Schools: 17
Students: 346
Teachers: 118
Cultural actors: 17
Tamassa: 39
Cities and settlements*: 36 out of 71
*The number of cities and settlements was found on Statistics Greenland.
