Orkanen

We are a non-profit democratic and politically independent organisation called "Orkanen" in Stockholm, Sweden, and we have been working project-based with music, culture and social development since 2010. Our main focus lies on culturally marginalized groups, and we have produced several projects with/for children and adolescents, immigrants and homeless people. One of our main goals is to give a voice to the speechless ones in society. These projects included festivals, making of records, cultural centers and workshops. Orkanen strive to make space for social and learning outside the formal spheres of schools and other politically based institutions. A place to be free, to make yourself heard and to play but also to take responsibility in encounters with others. We believe that such spaces have an important social function and that they can also make non-formal learning possible. We also wish to contribute to increased integration and establish meeting points where people, in a cross cultural context, can meet and through creative processes find common understanding and knowledge about themselves and the surrounding cultural environment. Such creative spaces can lead to a positive impact on everyday life, in both short and long terms for the participants. We believe in an upgrading of humanistic values and a society not guided by prejudices, and in balance between demanding rights and accepting responsibilities regardless of gender, age, class or ethnicity. In we are working with a project, called "Songs and Language". It began with the insight of the critical situation for foreign language learning in formal education in Sweden. Many students don't finish their language studies, there is a lack of motivation learning more languages than English, and the results are not satisfying. Students themselves think that that language is difficult, often because of too much focus on form and structure in place of oral activities and culture, and they don't feel motivated in an inner sense. Motivation in terms of interest, curiosity and desire to understand is thus rare. The situation for learning Swedish as a second language in Swedish schools is also problematic, because of the difficulties in integration and social inclusion in both youth culture, and society as a whole. We believe that music is a universal language that has many social and didactic benefits. However it's not a very common method in language classrooms in Sweden. Most adolescents, and people in general, have a relation to music in one sense or another, and we believe that music is an underestimated method for language learning. But we don't believe that there will be much change in this sense in formal education in Sweden right now, because of many reasons. In this project we therefore would like to explore and experiment with the idea of creating non-formal learning spaces for adolescents where the main goal is to learn a new language, which means a second or a third language, through song making. This is also one of the 8 key competences that the European council has stated (to speak 2 more European languages except your mother tongue). We are now planning to make a festival outside Stockholm in September 2019 where workshops and venues to perform and interact, will be organized together with adolescents from Sweden and other countries. This festival will also be the starting point of this whole project which will run for one year, until august 2020. During this period Orkanen and members of the organisation will pay visits to other European countries to specifically learn more about working with music as a didactic method, but also gather experiences about creative processes in general and other aesthetic practices such as film, drama, dance and art in non-formal contexts. We would also like to collaborate with organisations that work sports and other spare time activities, as well as organisations that work with language learning in socially excluded areas. We are not limited to any language but wish to include as many as possible. This work could also include the set up of a songs and language-center in another European city during , as well as the making of a festival, a record or web based material.