Culture & Creativity Hub

Culture & Creativity Hub is a group of young people founded by young people interested, educated and bringing together art, media and technology. Culture & Creativity Hub, which was initially developed by a group of friends to meet the social, cultural and economic needs of young people from different universities, to carry out activities that can benefit the individual development of young people, as well as to continue their education, to produce youth policies and to be a part of solutions to youth problems. It is a youth group that has reached the knowledge and experience to produce its works and projects as a result of the experiences gained by participating in its projects. There are more than 30 million young people under the age of 30 in Türkiye and this young population has very important potential. The use of technology in youth work is increasingly supported at national level by the Ministry of Development and the Ministry of National Education. In our approach, while the core mission of youth work remains to respond to the needs of young people, we see digital awareness as a key element to increase its effectiveness and to align with the broader digital transformation taking place in society. The name of digital youth work has now entered the literature in many European countries. We consider digital youth work both as a methodology and as a process that evaluates the potential of new technology. Although digital youth work has the same ultimate goals as youth work, we consider digital media and technologies as supporting elements in achieving these goals. Each of the individuals in our group has knowledge and experience in technology and technology education field and youth work and we aim to convey these experiences to the participants through our project. Culture & Creativity Hub members' expertise; technology, virtual reality and augmented reality technologies, digital fabrication applications, media and media education, animation, short films, photography, art, cinema, youth studies, entrepreneurship, environmental studies and permaculture. In addition to their international experiences, Culture & Creativity Hub members have also organised a variety of local youth activities. Some of these took place at Istanbul Technical University in collaboration with the university’s Permaculture Organization. They also worked in the Kuzguncuk Orchard and volunteered with local youth in Üsküdar, Istanbul, to promote permaculture as a daily practice among young people. Youth workers from Culture & Creativity Hub participated in an Erasmus+ training course in Estonia titled GREENYouth: Tools for Incorporating Forest Therapy into Rural and Urban Youth Work, where they were also partners. As part of the dissemination activities of this project, they organised local events in both Istanbul and Gaziantep to share what they had learned with young people in their communities.