O Nuno e o Frederico são de Portugal e fizeram um Training Course na Arménia. Esta é a partilha das suas experiências!
This Training Course “Explore yourself through art” was an adventure quest for me, almost in every aspect. When I applied my biggest objective was to bring my best friend Nuno. I wanted to show him how amazing this program is. The other objective was to see another country. As I am writing poems, I am connected to the subject of art. The TC was a way to improve myself, get inspiration and meet new people. So we, Nuno and I both applied.
After a long and adventurous travel we reached our destination Aghveran Hotel. It is a little bit far from Yerevan, in the middle of a valley in the nature and seems to be away from everything. A pleasant refuge to discover yourself.
Our working room was a big salon with a stage – the stage of our training week, our art gallery, our theather and dance stage, our base of friendship and discovering knowledge… looking back that big conference room was our world during that time.
We had a full program with so many different kinds of activities. There were a lot drawings for you to think about yourself. What kind of person are you and where do you want to go? What do you want to reach? Drawing trees, mandalas, best memories…To make you think about life in general. Some of the drawings we did in group work, so you had to be very open minded, social and patient, because not everybody shares the same idea. After a while the course changed to other forms of art, such as music and sound, where we could interact. There was always a component where you could think about yourself and your interactions with others.
In the middle of the week we also had two study vistis: to the centre My Way that was mainly for autistic kids where art was used as a therapy. The second one was the day center INTRA where people with mental health problems could find help, and also expressions themselves trought art. The study visits were in the morning, so in the afternoon, we were on our own. Me and Nuno did what we always do: walk to all the principal places by foot and take all the pictures we could. We managed to see all the main monuments and it was much fun.
The next days had a lot of art and diversity too, we had activities like doing a story trough photography or theatre. We also, had some time with corporal dancing, moving around, massage and relaxation.
The last days were composed by topics about Erasmus + and the components of it. We learned how this kind of Training Course works. We also had time to do our own workshop if we had some cool knowledge and skills to share. On top of that there was the NGO Fair, where me and Nuno expressed our wish to open our own NGO.
One night our organizers surprised us with a dinner in the house of a Armenian Cook with traditional armenian live music. Other form that there were free nights, where you could know more about the participants and I made some new friends. One of them suggested me to create a blog with my own poetry and I did.
Maybe this will open new doors.
The worst part about the T.C is the goodbye. I wished those days would last forever and when you reach home, you think about it over and over again.
What did I learn? How to use art, meeting new people, new country, new wine, new snacks, new oportunities and what can i say? I am grateful for the freedom to seek this kind of knowledge. The only thing I regret is that this text, will never be able to express what I felt during those days in Armenia. I would repeat this experience all over again not changing anything and it’s one of the treasured memories. I hope to keep it.