Week 1

On the first day of Cultural Diversity Clara gave a workshop and she shared her thoughts about doing social works. In her experience you really have to be still and listen. She tried to explain that basically your opinion or point of view won’t matter in the beginning, but you have to be a servant first before you can really make a difference or an impact.
We also had different assignments from her for example go out of the classroom and do not talk. Which wasn't that difficult for me, but the second assignment where we had to listen to the video and do the same as the woman, was more challenging. I thought that I was really loud, but turns out she couldn't hear me.
This session was really refreshing for me to reflect on myself and it also made me think if I was really listening to people or if I was hearing people just to say something back.

Another thing that had an effect on me that day was the books. There was a lot of books on the table and that just gave me an urge to start reading again. There are a lot of things and information that I have no clue about. A lot of quotes and references that was mentioned in the class that I didn’t know of and that had me curious.

-- Excursion The Black Archives & Muslimcool --
I was really excited to go to The Black Archives but I got sick. I am planning to go by myself, because I REALLY want to go. So maybe after that I will update this reflection. But probably it wouldn't be the same.

Week 2

Het Gemaal op Zuid - No comment

City in the Making
I actually like what City in the Making is doing. I actually know someone that lives in one of the building of them and we had an exhibition in it. It was a really nice project.
I also really liked how the day went. The setting was different and of course watching some movies is always nice.
The first movie was really heavy for me. Always when it comes to these types of topics or when I see injustice, I get really angry. But it was nice to hear the opinions and stories of everyone, and to see that this class is really a safe place to talk about certain things. I am not there yet, but I do feel comfortable.

Amy Assignments:

Manifesto LISTEN PDF

Newspaper PALMPJE

MidTerm Presentation

For our midterm presentation we first decided to do an experiment about the feeling of home and the feeling of belonging. We would do a cultural probe at a festival where we would design different spaces and see how people react in these spaces. With the feedback that we received from the midterm presentation we had to take a step back. We talked again about our essay. I was reading the book The Politics of Home by Jan Willem Duyvendak but eventually our idea took shape and this book wasn't necessary for our new project.

Group Project

Our NEW project is about using a game as an ice breaker to break the barriers to talk about topics that normally would be difficult to talk about. What topics you ask? They are cultural diversity topics which we discussed in this minor.
We redesigned the game Cards Against Humanity and also changed the title to Cards For Humanity. We left some of the sentences and the answer cards, but we also made new cards and new sentences and answer cards that is related to the minor.
Some example would be :
" Get back to the kitchen and make me a ______________." (a really sexist statement, to be able to talk about this)
" Talking about __________ is still a taboo.
"What words describe what it means to be a woman?"

In this game these topics comes forward: gender, sex, feminism, equality, racism, zwarte piet, diaspora, gentrification, mixed identity, being a foreigner etc.

The game is specially designed for high schools where there is one "coach"(can be a teacher or not" who guides the conversation after the game. The intention of the game is to have a conversation about certain topics.

We tested the game 10 times at Norbertus Gertrudis Lyceum and we had everytime a different group ( HAVO 1, HAVO 2, VWO4, VWO5) and we concluded that the brugklassers(HAVO1 and HAVO2) are the best groups to do this game with.

The feedback that we got from the students where that the game was really funny and that it really helps to talk about the topics afterwards because everyone made a joke about it and the gap between them and the topic is not that big anymore.