“Educating Adults Against Stereotypes – EASY” Final Conference in Sofia

On 25 October 2024 in Sofia, the final national conference of the Erasmus+ project “Educating Adults Against Stereotypes – EASY”, ref. number: 2021-1-PL01-KA220-ADU-000028240 took place. The event was attended by 52 persons, involved in the field of formal, informal and non-formal education.

In the first part of the event the EASY project was introduced through a detailed overview – partnership, aim and objectives, activities, expected outcomes, plans for sustainability. Afterwards each of the project results was presented in a separate presentation dwelling into the purpose of the result, the approach applied and the final outcome. The EASY website (www.projecteasy.eu) and its structure were shortly presented.

Before the practical workshop, two keynote speakers from the Bulgarian platform Kinematograf (https://kinematograf.bg/) – Mr Jordan Mihailovski and Mr Julian Spasov presented the approach of education through short movies that they apply in the Cinema school clubs they run, as well the corporate trainings they organize. What they considered common with the approach of EASY project was that by showcasing real-world situations and diverse perspectives through films can spark critical thinking and foster empathy among learners of all ages.

The second part of the event was practical workshop exploring 4 exercises from the EASY toolkit: “Gender stereotypes scavenger hunt” and “Become a comic creator”, based on the film “The Mask You Live In”, and then the Crossword based on the “Bingo!” Cartoon and finally “Navigating gender and age bias” based on the “The death of a saleswoman” Cartoon. The participants enjoyed most the joint development of a comic strip – each team had to draw one panel of different comic strips that were rotated around the room. At the end each team had contributed to the development of all comic strips and were really curious to see the final results and how the stories in each comic have evolved. In the end all comic strips were presented by the teams and displayed at a wall for everyone to be able to see them in more detail. The practical workshop offered a hands-on experience, enabling participants to explore the EASY project results in detail, apply them to real-world scenarios, and ask specific questions.

The event concluded with a short quiz based on movies from the EASY Catalogue and statistics related to different age and gender stereotypes. The event was eventually closed with a networking cocktail.

The feedback from the attendees suggests that the event was a success, providing a positive experience for the attendees and being generally considered enjoyable and valuable. The interactive nature of the event, including practical workshop based on the EASY Toolkit, discussions, and quizzes, was well-received. The topics covered were considered significant and timely, and the content was presented in a clear and understandable manner.