THE WRAPPING UP OF 'KIST' SUMMER SCHOOL

The summer school with a total of 9 participating schools from all over Kosovo, around a 70 participants and a bunch of fun and informative activities, left our participants who entered as students leave as small creators of the stop-motion animation video stories as well as, with the skills to navigate the duality of their reality as it is fed by their “phones”. The summer school kicked off on the 25th of July, a bit over a week before the official opening of the 22nd edition of the festival. The summer school, an integral part of the DokuKids program, was thus an integral part of the festival given the importance that the festival aims at the youngsters through DokuKids and its activities held at the festival each year. As per DokuFest’s restless attempt to tackle social problems through the medium of film, namely that of digital disinformation with its year long projects, the summer school’s aim was to increase digital literacy throughout the activities that would transpire on the 5 day longevity of the school. The activities at the school were all overseen by its facilitators, who in addition to teaching them about the dangers of digital misinformation they taught them the technical skills needed for the production of the stop-motion video stories each of the schools had to produce by the end of their stay. Petrit Tahiri from KEC, who is also an organizer of the summer school and KIST Project, talked about factors that lead youth to radicalization; Identification and prevention of violent extremism forms. Main mentors for production were Martina Kabashi and Zgjim Terziqi. Martina, Co-founder and Creative Director of KUKU Creations, taught them the in-depth methodology of creating stop-animation videos. Film Director, Zgjim Terziqi, taught them about the processes of coming up with a story and turning it into film. Facilitator, Alban Zenelaj, held talks on the media misinformation and implementation of audiovisual communication and film as mediums to bring forth complexities of the stories that are being told. These lessons were then enforced by facilitator Valon Canhasi, who gave the students practical instructions on how to tell a complex story on social media, among other lessons. Teachers were also invited to learn on navigating a learning community on issues that impact their students in this day and age, in a parallel session with students on how to handle harmful content, by KEC facilitators Kreshnike Ademi and Valdete Gjakova. After three days of the students taking in all of the information the last two days they were off to applying all that they had learned. The video stories include topics such overconsumption of social media, gender discrimination, bullying, enviroment etc. The videos created by each respective school are all attached on the link in the bottom of this article.. To add to the fun, the curriculum left space for the kids to rest and have fun with yoga instructed by Bora Shpuza Kasapolli, karaoke sessions, outdoor film screenings using our staple Solar Cinema, etc. The project is financed by the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in Kosovo and implemented by Dokufest and the Center for Education of Kosovo. You can find all of the 'stop-motion' videos HERE.