4. Making of

"It could be you, but it has happened to be me at this time and in this place. I'm not less than you, I'm just in a worse situation." This was the response of Ahid, a So Close participant, when we asked him what message he would like to convey to the local population. A clear, direct and powerful message that draws attention and invites empathy that has become the title of the multimedia documentary.

So Close, the crux of the matter

This multimedia documentary is one of the two tools developed by the MUME (Exile Memorial Museum) in the framework of So Close. So Close is a project that aims to improve social cohesion in Europe by sharing the cultural heritage of forced migrations of the past and present. To do so, interviews, focus groups, meetings, encounters between people from different backgrounds and experiences have been carried out, spaces for co-creation have been provided, and the result of all this has been collected in innovative digital and artistic tools designed specifically for the project.

The second tool developed by MUME for So Close is the Storymap “Traces from yesterday and today“.

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Gathering ideas from the focus groups

MUME
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Participants in the first focus group on forced migrations

MUME
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Participant in the second focus group on forced migrations

MUME
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Participants in the focus group of policy makers and academics

MUME
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Participants in the focus group of NGOs and cultural institutions

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Papers used in focus groups

MUME
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Participant in the second focus group on forced migrations

MUME
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Participants in the first focus group on forced migrations

MUME
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Answers to the question “How was the arrival?”

MUME
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Participants in the first focus group on forced migrations

MUME
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Participants in the second focus group on forced migrations

MUME
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Answers to the question “What would you bring from your culture?”

MUME
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Participants in the focus group of policy makers and academics

MUME
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Participants in the focus group of policy makers and academics

MUME
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Challenges and situations affecting people arriving in the country

MUME
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Participants in the focus group of NGOs and cultural institutions

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Participants in the focus group of NGOs and cultural institutions

MUME

Refugees, NGOs, cultural institutions, academics and political agents who participated in the initial research phase of So Close agreed on the need to design a project aimed at young people. A project that would serve to review the perspectives of the destination society regarding forced migrations, to remember the experience of our ancestors and to approach the realities of the people who have arrived more recently.

Given this agreement, we got down to work. The initial idea was to involve different agents in the design of activities that we would carry out in several educational centers, record the content and upload the result in the multimedia documentary. This idea was truncated shortly before starting. The 2021-2022 school year has been a hectic one due to the impact of the pandemic on schools, political reforms and various mobilizations, so we had to come up with a B plan. Then we came up with the idea of designing activities that could be maintained over time and that schools could carry them out on their own, even when So Close is finished.

Maybe those setbacks didn't work out so badly for us, right?

The idea

Co-creation

One of the pillars of So Close is co-creation. Co-creation is a process of collaborative creation among the different parties involved. In our case, this process has taken place from the first phases, when the people interviewed and participating in the Focus Groups shared their concerns and proposals on what topics to deal with and what activities to carry out, as well as in the active elaboration of contents and the collection of images of the process. In this way, the initial ideas have been shaped up to the present day.

In the creation of “It could be you!” have participated migrants and refugees, students of Social Integration of the Ramon Muntaner High School of Figueres, the company Educ’Art, NGOs and MUME staff dedicated to So Close. Once we have designed the activities we have made a pilot test with the training cycle of Sociocultural Animation of the Vallvera High School of Salt. Thanks to the feedback from the students of Vallvera we have finished revising and completing the proposal.

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Encounter between students of social integration and participants of So Close

MUME
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Brainstorming interview questions

MUME
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Encounter between students of social integration and participants of So Close

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Role-play proposal and other activities

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Learning diary of the Sociocultural Animation group after the introductory talk.

MUME
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Encounter between students of social integration and participants of So Close

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Calendar of the sessions with the students of Social Integration of the Institut Ramon Muntaner

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Encounter between students of social integration and participants of So Close

MUME
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Learning diary of the Sociocultural Animation group after carrying out the activity “Have you packed your suitcase?”.

MUME
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Encounter between students of social integration and participants of So Close

MUME
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Learning diary of the Sociocultural Animation group after the “Target associations” activity.

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Encounter between students of social integration and participants of So Close

MUME
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Ideas and proposals collected by the different discussion panels

MUME

Social Integration students

From So Close we wanted to involve the Social Integration students in the design of activities of “It could be you!”, because we considered that the process of training and preparation could be enriching for students who, when they incorporate into the working life, may be dealing with people who have been the focus of stereotypes and prejudices. The idea was very well received by the teachers at Ramon Muntaner High School and we jumped headlong into it.

Final meeting

On June 11th, 2022, after many months working on the project with many online and some face-to-face meetings, we held an open day session to present a first version of the two digital tools and see what were the reactions, what was failing, what was working well….

Within the framework of this event we reserved a space for artistic creation, so all the attendees could read the poems and writings presented in the section “Art as a refuge”, choose one and create an art work based on what the text suggested to them. These creations were exhibited at the MUME for fifteen days.

That same day we had a round table with some of the participants of the project. Excerpts from the contents of the interventions have been collected to illustrate parts of this multimedia documentary.