Visitors from Poland at the vocational high school in Bad Oldesloe

Musical collaboration – “with you and with me”

„With you and with me. U mnie i u ciebie. Local youth exchange.“ Following this motto the second part of the exchange project for the German-Polish Youth Award 2021-2023 took place from the 19^th until the 24^th September 2022 at the vocational school in Bad Oldesloe. This exchange project was initiated by the German-Polish Youth Foundation. As part of this two-phased competition project the students from the ITG20 (graduating class of the vocational high school, specializing in IT and media design) were already guests at Poznańska Ogólnokształcaca Szkoła Muzyczna, the music high school in the Polish town of Poznań in May this year. “The aim of this competition and its project outcome is to create value for the local communities by raising awareness and interest of young people for their local environment”, explained Claudia Schecker, European coordinator for the vocational school in Bad Oldesloe. Following the motto “about the place, for the place, with the place”, the students from both schools were challenged to creatively depict the districts, villages, cities, and counties in their local areas. The participating students from the schools in both towns created German-Polish music guides under the project name “Our favourite places in Poznań and Bad Oldesloe – a digital travel guide”. In this guide the students presented their favourite places in and around the two towns in short videos. These videos are still accompanied by music which was recorded by the chamber orchestra of the Polish music high school. “This is what makes this project so special: The collaboration of two expert classes! On the one hand, there is the concentrated expertise in the field of media design by the students from Bad Oldesloe, while on the other hand the students from Poznań excited us with their musical creativity and virtuosity”, emphasizes Nicole Lange, class teacher of the ITG20. Her specialist colleague for design technology Jennifer Ahrns adds: “It truly was a great challenge which was brilliantly mastered by all students involved.”

In addition to the productive group work, the Polish and German delegations each offered varied social programs for their visitors. This included a visit to the dress rehearsal of the Hamburg Symphony Orchestra at the Laeiszhalle as well as the participation in a workshop at the Poznań Croissant Museum, where the students made the sweet Polish pastry themselves. A special highlight of the exchange in Bad Oldesloe marked the benefit concert of the chamber orchestra of the Poznan music high school, which took place under the motto „Getting closer and closer to jazz“ in the Peter-Paul Church for the benefit of Ukraine aid on the 21^st September 2022. With the donations that were collected in this concert, the school supports two projects. “In cooperation with our partner school in Odessa in southern-Ukraine, the donations will be given to kindergartens and schools in the rural area around Odessa. The second donation project supports survivors of National Socialist persecution in Ukraine”, explains donation initiator Claudia Schecker. The concert audience was offered a rousing program of modern chamber orchestral music, increasingly influenced by jazz as the evening progressed, by the Poznań chamber orchestra, conducted by Jacek Pawelcak, deputy director of the Poznań music high school.

Both the students of the exchange project and the accompanying teachers described the collaboration with the exchange partners as warm-hearted and harmonious. Even the initial challenge of the language barrier did not cause any problems due to multilingual conversations in German, Polish and English. “I experienced the German-Polish collaboration as challenging but at the same time as a very good experience and I really enjoyed speaking English all the time. Actually, so much that I even started thinking in English after a few days! Since the visit in Poland, I have been in close contact with one of the Polish students and we get to talk regularly”, says student Lina Stoppel, summarizing her experience.

For the ceremonial conclusion of the exchange project, both delegations will represent their joint project results to the jury at the final seminar of the German-Polish Youth Award in Poland in summer 2023. To the great fortune of the participants, the exchange project has laid a foundation for further cooperation between the two schools. So, to sum up the project in one word: Grandiose!

(ReA and Schr, vocational school in Bad Oldesloe)