Our 2020 Calendars are ready!

Xo xo xo 🙂 Time for gifts 🎁 and thanks giving! 🙂 This lovely calendar was made as one of results in the frame of Erasmus Plus Youth exchange “Imagination Is the True Magic Carpet”.

The design was made by Georgian group leader Nino Amiranishvili. Thank you our bestie and also thanks to all of you who made this summer unforgettable by diving into mosaic art!

Wish you all Merry Christmas and Happy New year! 🎊🎆 🌲

Dear friends,

For two months every weekend our Latvian girls with their friends and long term volunteers from Radi Vidi Pats were coming together to make another wonderful mosaic masterpiece.

To make a beautiful mosaic you don’t need to use expensive materials. It can be made from old plates, china, porcelain,and dishes. In ours we did not use only pieces of glass or ceramic tiles, but also gave some old plates a new life.

Last Saturday we finally installed it and even the strong wind and storm could not interrupt our plans. But that would not be Liepaja without the wind!

Now our mosaic is in it’s new place in Julianas pagalms to make it more colorful and joyful.

We hope that it will delight all locals and every visitor who comes.

Big thanks to everyone who devoted their time and helped us with mosaic making process and this project. We all have put our pieces of heart in it!

Hello, dear friends

Our mosaic in Rustavi has been finished already few months back, but that does not mean that we have stopped practicing mosaic making. As a part of this youth exchange we have been organizing on the weekends mosaic workshops and meetings for our Latvian girls and our friends to make another spectacular artwork in mosaic technique. Soon it will be finished, and we are inviting you to visit Julianas pagalms in Liepaja where the Radi Vidi Pats is located and have a look at our mosaic wall.

We hope that you all will love it and it will inspire you to decide to make some mosaic art peace yourself!

Laura and Agnese

Latvian team leaders

Gamarjoba!

Time flies and our youth exchange has ended, summer is gone, and autumn is here, but we still miss Georgia and our friends. We wanted to share our memories and experience with others, so we organized event at Radi Vidi Pats office where we told stories about our adventures, about how we learned to dance Georgian dances, sing Georgian songs and how we hiked to Kazbegi…

Also, big part of getting better to know Georgian culture was trying out different kinds of Georgian food, so we invited two Georgian longterm volunteers to organize cooking workshop for us. (Ketia and Georgian culinary chef Giorgi). They both were teaching and showing us how to prepare the famous Georgian dumplings – khinkhali, and also khachapuri and lobiani. After the event one of our girls (Arta) put her newly gained skills in practice and impressed her family with khachapuri.


Big thanks to Georgi and Ketia. And for all those who came, listened our stories and participated in our cooking workshop.
All roads lead back to Georgia!

 

(We are practicing khinkhali making)

Travel back home

Latvian team made it to Rīga, safe and sound.

Georgian hosting team did it too but they are not safe - SHAURMA party after regular, delicious meals during 15 days in International Scout Centre Rustavi (iscr.ge). 

 Keep check this blog out - soon here will be posted project's fallow up events in Latvia and Georgia.

Day 15 - Celebration of our results

 When you set goals for yourself, it is important that they motivate you: this means making sure that they are important to you, and that there is value in achieving them. Motivation is key to achieving goals!

Culture exchange is important tool to promote social inclusion, equality and the active participation of young people, as well as fight against discrimination and poverty. It is important to develop young people's cultural competences from a lifelong perspective, as it is linked to other key competences of their lives. It is important for us to give them the opportunity to access to the culture because it is connect with self-expression, individual development and self-confidence, innovation and creativity, joy and willingness to accept other cultures, including European cultural heritage.

 Today is the fifteen day since we all come together in Rustavi city in order to learn more about mosaic art and Latvian artist Julijs Straume who spend many years in Georgia. And today is the day when we were writing letters to each other, discovering who were our secret friend, giving promises to meet each other soon again and celebrating Youthpass receiving - a document what recognise learning outcomes of our youth exchange project.

Day 14 - The Big Event!

In the morning we planned an event in which we showed the locals what we learned, went through and what we did the past 2 weeks. The event was consists of 5 parts.

Juljis straume theatre show.

We made a mini theatre about the life of Juljis Straume, about his studies, his work, his private life ;) (not private anymore). The locals really enjoyed it, everyone of the members participated, it was kind of a comedy show.

Erasmus+

One of our leaders, Nini, introduced locals to Erasmus+, about its given opportunities - ESC, training courses, youth exchanges and other youth mobilities. 

Latvian culture

Some of the Latvian girls have set up a video about Latvia. Some technical problems occurred, and we used this moment to sing Latvian folk song. After the technical issues the video resumed. There was also a mini quiz after the video, about Latvia.

Grafitti art

Our guest artist Giorgi Kopadze from Georgia showed us one of the old school street arts, including spray paint to draw a beautiful scene on the paper. People were taking pictures and were amazed at his skills. 

Optional workshop either mosaics or stencil art

In mosaic workshop, people were making mini mosaics, locals learned more about how to make them and what materials to use. In stencil workshop people learned more about stencils and tried to make some art out of famous people portrait stencils using spray paint.

After the good job, we enjoyed Georgian Barbecue (smcvadi) party.

Day 13 - Step fast, step light, step it up!

Last night was really rough but we still were able to for hike to David Gareja

The ride was bumpy and most of the people felt like mashed potatoes, but the view was worth the ride.

Weather was unbelievably hot and a bit windy but we went to see the church which was hidden in the caves and we also saw ancient architecture

After checking the view we went for hike. It was a bit tiring but still we had a lot of fun. Only thing that was a pity is that we weren't able to reach the destination because of Azerbaijan border police. Despite that we had some fun times up there.

After hiking we had lunch in the heat and everyone was trying to get cold water.

Some of us were sharing some creepy facts about spiders and weird bugs and some of us didn't enjoy the facts that much and were shocked a little bit.

We had the bumpy ride back to Rustavi but we were tired and happy.

When we came back in Rustavi we were doing some mosaic stuff and finally the mosaic was on the wall and we could start the finishing work of it.

At the end we can say that the day was full of good vibes and we had so much fun together.!!!!!!

Day 12 - Our magic carpet is moving!

This was a really special day for all of us – our magic carpet was placed on the wall! Well it wasn`t as easy as it looked,  because it was heavy and our boys had to put in some effort, but everything was fine at the end. The mosaic looks great and we all are very happy and  proud of our work!

Also we was happy about opportunity to do some OPEN SPACE workshops again. For example, Giorgi was teaching for Latvian girls a Georgian dances and Latvian long term ESC volunteer Martins was teaching some juggling tricks. It was quite fun!

In the midnight we had a little birthday party! Who was the birthday boy? NIKA! J

Day 11 - Creating art in GYE

As we had to give the time for our beautiful mosaic to dry we tried to spent our day not less creative. This day we spent in our hosting organisation's Georgian Youth for Europe office. Our task was to learn how to make graffiti stencil art and how to easily paint on the walls.

We started with stencil art.  It is easy and the results looks very professional. All you need is to  print black and white image. The image can be what ever you like. This time we used famous people portraits like Marilyn Monroe, Michael Jackson etc. After you have the image all you need to do is to cut out shaded parts after that put the paper on other paper sheet and spry it with paint. Let it dry for a few seconds, take off the paper and you should have amazing graffiti stencil.

The second part of the day we spent like an artists as well - we were painting on the GYE office wall. Before we started to paint there was made a sketch with idea. To make the job easier we projected drawing on the wall and then all we needed to do was trace the lines of the drawing. With both of these techniques good results are guaranteed and there is no borders if you put your creativity in it.

Day 10 - Our mosaic is done!

Today kept working of our "magic carpet" and having OPEN SPACE workshops.

Nana's and Paula were leading Clothes Swap workshop. They introduced us about swapping culture all over the world - swap meet participants exchange their valued but no longer used clothing for clothing they will use.Clothing swaps are considered not only a good way to refill one's wardrobe, but also are considered an act of environmentalism.

After this workshop we learned how to make carpets from old clothes. That was quite fun, exciting and interesting method what we will remember for rest of our lives.

Then there was a time for Martins's Creative text writing workshop.  Participants could write whatever they want. Some of them found out themselves as poets, not kidding. 

While we were finding the poet in our self, the last group finalized our mosaic! That was the happiest and the same time saddest moment of the day. It was fun making mosaics but also tiring too.. Our hard work has made some progress and at the end it was like our baby, we loved it so much. Take a look closer.

 The day finished well. We had movies marathon all night. :)