EUSTORY Summits - Detail

The year 1989 is a symbol of the transitions in Europe. 30 years later, from 15 to 19 October 2019, the EUSTORY Next Generation Summit will bring together 120 young people from 30 countries in Europe and beyond in Berlin. They are going to explore how people experienced the transitions and what remains of the dream of a united Europe.

The transitions in Europe had so often been fought for with great dedication and hope for more freedem, democracy and citizen participation. When and how did they then become a nucleus of disappointment through lengthy political and economic challenges? Like no other, the city of Berlin stands for this time of change, serves as a canvas to deal with the question of social transformation from different perspectives: The participants, aged 16 to 26, all of them winners of national EUSTORY competitions, can choose from eight workshops which will not only focus on Eastern and Central Europe, but will also look at the Spanish "Transicíon" of the 1970s and the Western Balkans after the collapse of Yugoslavia in the 1990s.

On the basis of these themes and regions, the participants will not only work on the stories of their own family, their region or their country, but also dare to engage in cross-border dialogue on topics that are conflict-laden to this day: How do people deal with disappearing or shifting borders that have divided societies for decades? What methods can subsequent generations develop to deal with traumas and tension-laden aspects of the past? How can young people use history not only as a bone of contention but as a starting point for international understanding?

The young participants will work together with experts from the fields of art, culture, science and journalism and are going to try out various forms of presentation, such as a multimedia video presentation, a walk-in audio installation, and the staging of the Forgotten. In one workshop, the participants are asked to create photographic collages and interweave personal family stories from the time of the fall of communism with their own recordings of symbolic places in Berlin.

Two workshops will be organised in cooperation with institutional partners:

The "Getting Glocal" workshop, which focuses on the development of the Baltic Sea region since 1989, is organised in cooperation with the Council of Baltic Sea States(CBSS) and with the support of the Federal Foreign Office and is part of the Baltic Sea Youth Dialogue Programme run by the CBSS and partner.

In the workshop "Theatres of Memory" questions about remembering and forgetting historical events will be addressed. This workshop is organised in collaboration with the Spanish foundation Real Maestranza de Caballería de Ronda, which also organises the Iberian history competition.

Here, you can find more about the workshops and activities of the upcoming EUSTORY Next Generation Summit 2019.