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The Helsinki
Committee for Human Rights in Serbia
and its partner organization from
Prishtina, the Liberal Democratic
Centre, organized the seminar titled
“Serbia and Kosovo: Intercultural
Icebreakers” on March 27-31, 2015 in
Belgrade. Young people from Kosovo
and Serbia, active and interested in
culture and arts, spent five
creative and working days, making
friends and exchanging experiences
and knowledge about their societies
and cultures.
Participants in the seminar had an
opportunity to listen to lectures by
prominent authorities in arts and
culture. During the first day writer
Sasa Ilic delivered a lecture on
“Literature of the Separated Worlds
- Cultural Exchange as
Peace-building (Kosovo/Serbia)”
addressing the history of divided
societies, cultural and political
developments since early ‘80s until
today, the culture and politics of
denial, the avenues for cooperation
in arts and culture, especially at
the literary scene, and the
importance of cultural exchanges.
“Communication is being created
through culture and arts. It is
necessary to show that kind of
openness in the communication and to
allow the inflow of information and
stories in order to change
ourselves, and through our change we
can make changes in societies we
live in,” he said among other
things. Film
director and investigative
journalist Birol Urcan tackled the
topic “Culture and Arts in Closed
and Open Societies”, while
socio-anthropologist Eli Krasniqi
delivered the lecture titled “The
Other, Pop Culture and Work of
Memory” dealing with stereotypes,
collective memory, cultural and art
products, etc. At the end
participants had an opportunity to
talk to conceptual artist Milica
Tomic during her lecture “Artist
Talk: The Short Circuit Between
Intimacy and Politics”.
Besides lectures young artists were
attending the workshops held by
sociologist Demir Mekic
and psychologist Tamara Tomasevic. During
the workshops they teamed up for
creative campaigns for mutual
respect, understanding and tolerance
to be staged in the period to come.
In this way, the program helps the
promotion of young artists from both
societies, who will be working
together for breaking prejudices and
stereotypes, and promoting good
relations between Kosovo and Serbia.
The participants in the seminar also
visited different cultural
institutions and organizations in
Belgrade in order to learn more
about cultural and artistic programs
on Serb-Albanian relations. They
toured the Museum of Contemporary
Art in Belgrade, the Center for
Cultural Decontamination, the
Cultural Center REX and met with
their peers of the Youth Initiative
for Human Rights.
Furthermore, they enjoyed some of
the cultural events in Belgrade such
as the Belgrade Documentary and
Short Film Festival.
One of the participants, Teodora
Petrovic, student of Faculty of Fine
Arts in Belgrade speaks about her
impressions saying: “I think that
organization of this kind of
seminars is very necessary. They
should be more frequent, and more
numerous, because they are
important. They are important
because facing with the recent and
repressed past is completely absent
in this society, and it is the main
prerequisite for a healthy
perception of responsibility of a
young individual. It seems that my
generation hardly feels responsible
in any way for what happened not so
long ago. This does not mean that
there are no such young people; it
only means that they are confused,
misinformed and manipulated. If they
are confused, misinformed and
manipulated every opportunity for
repeating of what have happened is
possible, because the continuity of
building a culture of ethnic hatred
has not been interrupted. Therefore,
it is necessary to insist on these
kinds of seminars and to dissolve
the models of official culture,
based on intolerance and
misunderstanding. There are people
who have the courage to speak about
this problem in a very clear and
good way, some of them were part of
the seminar, but there is also a
large audience who would have to
learn this as well.”
Aurela Kadriu, secondary school
student from Prishtina says, „It was
one of the greatest opportunities
ever given to me, I had the most
valuable chance to meet my peers
from Belgrade, see this beautiful
city, and I got to know more about
their points of view, their
interests and culture. During those
five days in Belgrade, I could
hardly notice that we, the
participants in that seminar don't
belong to the same country, because
we managed to communicate and
collaborate so fine together! I am
very glad to have been part of that
seminar, I am very glad to have met
people like them, which of course
will be a strong reason for me to
stay in touch with developments in
Serbia, Belgrade, and the friends I
made will surely be a strong reason
for me to re-visit Belgrade!“
The overall goal of the program is
to contribute to renewing old and
create new ties between young
people, academic and artistic
community, media and civil society
from Belgrade and Prishtina by
promoting intercultural dialogue,
reconciliation and normalization
process. Program is
realized with the assistance of the European Union under the Support
to Civil Society Facility 2013.
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