By Stefanie Landgraf and Johannes Gulde

In everyday life and at school, we don't just learn with our minds. In the absence of humanity and compassion, whether for our neighbors or asylum seekers, we experience social exclusion and racism. This is demonstrated by the numerous attacks on refugees, burning asylum shelters and a lot of hate speech on social networks. Without compassion, there can be no togetherness.

How can we counter discrimination and racism, how can we promote empathy and compassion among young people, which must be learned in order to live together peacefully and cooperatively in an immigration society? How can we contribute to better interpersonal understanding, free from prejudice and cultural misunderstandings?

In the 1980s,together with the German Youth Institute (dji), we developed the intercultural encounter model "Learning to perceive and understand foreign and one's own living environments" in the north of Munich, which was considered a social hotspot. Through creative-artistic interactions, role-playing and self-determined video and media work, we promoted a culture of encounters and relationships between young people from different cultures, which gave them a perspective that enabled them to get to know and understand themselves and others they perceived as "foreign" better. In a multicultural leisure facility, for example, the social workers found it very difficult to prevent "assaults between German and Turkish young people". We took the time to get to know the procedures in the leisure center and experienced the daily exclusion and racism that determined the relationship between the young people[1].

We then decided to work with both groups separately at first, to let each group make their own play and camera experience, their own video film - about cliques, home, school, foreigners or What is home? - and only then bring them together. This concept bore fruit. Right from the first meeting, the Turkish and German young people showed each other the videos they had made, discovering similarities and differences, e.g. "in Turkey, when men walk arm in arm or kiss, it's not gay but a gesture of friendship and respect". They began to listen to each other, absorb different points of view and exchange ideas. We concluded the project with a joint video.

If they are able to see their own way of life - and the values and norms associated with it - as one of many possibilities and not make it the benchmark for others, young people can also accept other cultural values and norms as equal and also question their own. The exchange about cultural customs and traditions, which vary greatly depending on the country of origin and often lead to misunderstandings, has contributed to this. As a result, it became clear that active, self-determined media work made a dialog and mutual understanding possible. Whereas the German and Turkish youngsters had previously only played soccer in their own group of origin, at the end of the workshop they faced each other as teams, no longer playing separately for the first time, but together on one pitch with one ball[2].

We have continued to develop this intercultural encounter model over the years as part of our media education work in national and international workshops in collaboration with pedagogical and artistic teams - funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Science, the Federal Foreign Office, the Robert Bosch Foundation, Caritas International, terre des hommes, the Evangelical Church in Bavaria and others.

Finally, in 2016we were able to realize the international youth encounter project "How do you live? - learning to understand the history of others", which was funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) as a practical research project in 2018/2019 and scientifically supported by the Munich University of Applied Sciences under the direction of Prof. Dr. Constance Engelfried.

Participants in the workshop were 16 to 20-year-old young people who had fled their country and were seeking protection from terror, religious persecution and war, and young people from Bavaria, Saxony and Jordan who were completing an apprenticeship as a retail saleswoman, baker, carpenter, car mechanic or a vocational training year (BJV). We chose trainees because they are already in employment and, unlike secondary schools and grammar schools, vocational schools have few opportunities for their students to take part in intercultural exchange programs abroad. An important project objective for us was to document the encounter process on video throughout and to make the results available as a media package for educational work.

The pedagogical-didactic workshop concept of "How do you live?" was based on body-based, creative and social-emotional learning (SEL), which is in line with the latest findings of brain research and succinctly states: We only learn what touches us - nothing works without feeling! Why? Because only feelings and emotional involvement enable sustainable learning and change processes, as well as the ability to change perspective. On this basis, new attitudes and ways of acting can be learned and emotionally anchored, which cannot be achieved through intellectual insight alone. "A person only acquires new knowledge, new skills and abilities when it touches them emotionally, when something gets under their skin, i.e. when the emotional centers in their brain are activated," says neurobiologist Prof. Dr. Gerald Hüther in his article "Learning with enthusiasm - A plea for a new learning culture". "Only then are so-called neuroplastic messenger substances released at the ends of the widely ramified extensions of the nerve cells located in the emotional centers in the midbrain... That's why you can only learn something new and anchor a new experience in the brain in the form of new wiring patterns if you are enthusiastic about it..."

We documented the workshop with two cameras and edited the video material (over 250 hours) over several months into a film, which was shown at several screenings in 2020/22 in our studio and in a cinema and met with a strong response, not only from educational professionals. For the first time, the film makes the process of creative and social-emotional learning visible and comprehensible as a pedagogical task. In five chapters(165 minutes), it conveys the process of resistance and rapprochement that the young people go through in the encounter. All of them were equally valued by the pedagogical and artistic team - withoutevaluations and instructions. This enabled the young people to discover their desire to create together and to develop their talents: In role play, educational boxing and dancing, painting, improvisational theater and poetry/rap, through which they were able to communicate across all language and cultural boundaries. The young people experienced how it "feels when I try something new in the group" and found it "great" when something that "we are doing for the first time" "finally works" with the support of the team.

On the first day of the workshop, the atmosphere was still noticeably tense. No one knew the others. In Chapter 1 of the film, 17-year-old Yarah from Syria, a country at civil war, says haltingly: "We are Christians... and many in our village were killed...we were afraid, terribly afraid...just wanted to get away from the terror and war". After a very long pause, the young people from Saxony and Bavaria responded: "We only know war from television... It's hard to put yourself in such a situation". Shortly afterwards, the choreographer and dancer Deniz - at home in German and Turkish culture - motivates the young people to express their feelings, which they associate with fear, in facial expressions, gestures and dance movements. This broke the ice. As a result, the young people began to listen to each other, discuss similarities and differences and learn from each other. Stereotypes and fears began to dissolve and a sense of "community" took root.

The artistic-pedagogical program encouraged the young people to experience themselves creatively, which expanded the boundaries of their own experience. (Perception and prejudice / Other customs and traditions). They learned how to deal with their own emotions, fears, strengths and weaknesses and those of others (Dance and Educational Boxing part of the program), as well as how to resolve conflicts fairly and without violence (In the Shoe of the Other). "Such processes," says Hüther, "lead to the creation of coherence between feeling and thinking, between old experiences and new ones...between oneself and the other, between oneself and one's body, between oneself and the world..." "Anyone who understands this," says the neurobiologist, "also understands why you can't teach people anything that doesn't get under their skin."

A key experience for the group was theirencounter with trainees in Jordan, "where", as they said, "Islam and the headscarf are at home", while their visit to the Al Za'atari refugee camp in a desert region on the Syrian border was an incisive experience. It triggered empathy and a critical view, for example of the living conditions that cause people to flee to seek protection in other countries.

Leon: "It's amazing how people live who have to flee their homeland because they no longer have a future there"

Firaz: "I asked a boy how they cope with the heat, as the containers are made of sheet metal. And they have no fans. And in winter it rains in. When it rains for three to four hours, they can't sleep because the water runs in everywhere..."

Chris: "I have to be honest, it was an experience I hadn't had before. It was awesome."

Yazan: "What we see on TV is completely different to what we experienced here."

Moussa: "To be honest, the containers look much nicer on TV. The reports don't show what it's really like. They only tell us what they want, that the refugees can live normally and well.... I think the situation there is a disaster."

In part 5 of the film, the young Jordanians come to Germany for a return visit. "A dream", as they kept saying, which is now coming true for them. They only know Germany or other European countries from YouTube films or television. In the group, they talk about their first impressions of Germany:

Fayez: "On the road, I noticed that everyone was wearing headphones and listening to music. Everyone is on their own. Everyone talks to each other on the bus, it's very quiet here. I really like that."

Hadeel: "With us, you can listen to music loudly on the bus. Not with you. Why is that?"

Leon: "Because people just want their peace and quiet."

Yazan: "The best thing about Germany is the nature, everything is green. Unfortunately, that's not the case here. Our country consists of a lot of desert and thorn bushes. And yet people live there too!"

Yazan: "What I like about the Germans is their reliability....If you order a cab and it says in 5 minutes, it will come in 5 minutes. I think that's great."

Firaz: "If someone misbehaves here, gets too loud or throws garbage on the street, they're told straight away. They tell them that there are rules... If you like order, you can definitely learn something here."

Moussa: "Everything here follows the rules. That doesn't turn me on so much. I'm more of a chaotic person."

As a result, the film conveys:

* Differences between the cultures could be experienced as enrichment

* Confidence in one's own creative power of design and judgment arose

* Openness to listen to the stories of others

* Courage to tell one's own story

* Respect and empathy for the world of the other young people

* Community experiences emotionally anchored the recognition and insight that

insight that people are different but equal

* It is possible to live with differences

* We all have the same need for "recognition, respect and love".

The accompanying scientific research comes to similar conclusions and emphasizes that the artistic-pedagogical and social-emotional approach we have chosen is suitable for "strengthening the self-confidence of young people... to open up new approaches to their own and others' physicality...to build new bonds...to experience the peer group as a space for negotiating difference and agreement as well as developing solidarity...and to deal productively with their own racist and xenophobic prejudices"[3].

What they took away from the workshop, what touched them most emotionally, was reported by the young people individually in a short presentation to the whole group. In the background is the large picture that they painted together on the subject of "home" over the course of the workshop - sometimes a place where they felt comfortable and at home, sometimes a place of longing from which they had to leave or flee. Those whose voices failed were embraced by the group. We were impressed by their final performance with dance and boxing compositions, playful pantomime and rap, in which they reflected on their encounter experience with their own texts. (Chapter 5 in the film). Excerpt from one of their raps:

... the tour shit is over now,

if I've learned anything it's humanity,

not just sightseeing and good food,

We sat in a camp with 80,000 Syrians,

We saw a lot, we thought about things,

We made one thing clear:

Strangers are just friends,

that we have not yet met ....

Everyone benefited from the workshop. The refugees, most of whom - although they had been with us for several years - did not know any Germans, the young people from Saxony and Bavaria, who - with two exceptions - had never met refugees before, who had previously crossed the street because "fear of foreigners" determined their behavior.

At the end of the workshop, 17-year-old Yarah from Syria, a country at civil war, was able to counter her fear of racist agitation and calls such as "Germany to the Germans - foreigners out" - whether on Facebook or on the street - with a new and encouraging experience: "I found out that there really are a lot of people here who make me feel that I can also find a home here". Even years later, the young people are still in contact with each other: Facebook & Co make it possible.