Art Techno Lab 🎨

While it was a cold February in Estonia, and all nature was still sleeping, a group of 5 young people went to green Madeira in Portugal to recharge themselves with the sun and learn new things on the topic of art and digitalization! 🇵🇹

So, we returned from a youth exchange in Funchal, which took place from February 25 to March 4 and was called "ART TECHNO LAB" 🎨 From the title you can guess what topics we covered, but we will tell you in a little more detail! We went to Madeira thanks to our sending Estonian organization Life Zone Group.

Project's goal was to make it easy for young artists to share their digital experiences. So, participants from 6 countries came together to achieve their goal. Contemporary dancers, people interested in photography, former volunteers/art gallery workers, artists and musicians, in a word - talents, came together! Therefore, the atmosphere in the air was creative and full of positive vibes.

On the first day we got to know each other a little better and also learned about the experiential learning method and what we need to keep in mind when we create our own projects. And all this was followed by a game around the city, starting from the Cristiano Ronaldo Museum, and ending with the small streets of the old town of Funchal and the colorful painted doors around! Our host organization was ARTE.M, and Jovan from CEFE Macedonia immersed us in experiential learning. It was insightful!

The next day we delved into the topic even more, talking about marketing and its strategies for promoting ourselves and promoting our art, and then we had the opportunity to present ourselves in a creative format and get a “job” on the team to create our own digital art brand. It was tense 😅

Workshops in photography and video filming simply on the phone, educational escape rooms and all this in the atmosphere of a local art gallery brought us a lot of new knowledge and discoveries, and for this we can say just thank you!

We also had time to explore a bit of the eastern part of the island, thereby simultaneously gaining inspiration for the final presentations and at the same time having excellent team building. Did you know that the Statue of Christ the Redeemer in Brazil was inspired by the same but miniature version of the statue in Madeira that appeared earlier?

Having spent all the cultural evenings/dinners, getting to know the culture of the participating countries more closely, as well as holding all the presentations of all the brands, we would like to say that everyone did an excellent job, and we hope that these ideas will only develop and multiply in the future!

Thank you to the host organization for your hospitality, as well as to all participants and everyone involved for your contribution to the success of the project!

Text: Aleksandra Galkina