The International Yehudi Menuhin Foundation submitted an original project within the framework of the call for proposals launched by the European Commission for the European Year of Intercultural Dialogue 2008. The purpose of this call for proposals was to select seven emblematic projects in Europe, all illustrating the theme of intercultural dialogue.

We were overjoyed to learn that our project, entitled "iyouwe SHARE THE WORLD", was among the seven projects approved by the DG Culture et Education experts.

"iyouwe SHARE THE WORLD" proposes an interactive work to children from several primary schools in Europe (Hungary, France, Belgium, United Kingdom, Portugal, Germany and Italy) with storytelling artists, assisted by plasticians and/or musicians, in order to recapture a common imaginary world and share it artistically as widely as possible. The unifying theme of the tales is the Cosmogony of the World.  This first stage will be followed by a sharing of experiences, which will take place in Hungary in the form of artists' residential sessions. Communication-oriented tools will be produced, while the artistic practices developed in the seven participating countries will be disseminated with the support of world-renowned musicians during a multicultural closing event to be held at the Cirque Royal in Brussels on 4 December 2008.

For many years, the International Yehudi Menuhin Foundation has used tales as a meeting tool between cultures of the world ("Nomadic Tales", "Children from Here, Tales from Afar", "Little, Little and the Seven Worlds").

Tales are actually an art of relations and a performing art. They are intercultural in essence because of the meetings and confrontations encountered in them, while they are also multicultural because of the different versions of the same storyline proposed.

We were keen to convey this approach, which builds up a common store of knowledge and culminates in "iyouwe SHARE THE WORLD": creating our own stories and tales and exchanging them with those from various cultures in various places in the world, to illustrate the idea that our visions of the world answer each other and bring us closer to one another.

This project is based on established practices and relay centres in the field of arts at school in Europe: we asked several of our MUS-E associations to be co-organizers of the project and seven of them agreed. We are also privileged to be able to rely on the expertise of a number of partners, recognized for their competence in various areas: La Maison du Conte in Brussels, the Roma Education Fund in Budapest and the IRFAM Institute in Liège (Research, Training and Action Institute on Migrations), a partner that will carry out assessments of the whole project throughout the year.

So as to see the project through successfully and ensure its quality, the Foundation called on the services of a pool of experts, in charge of the various aspects and phases of the project: we are delighted to have Hamadi with us again, with his knowledge and storyteller's sensitivity, to guarantee the quality of the work based on tales; Patries Wichers, who has already developed with us a fine expertise in collecting artistic practices at international level within the MUS-E network and who will be in charge of interactivity among the artists involved; Andor Timar, an audiovisual expert for the Foundation, who has already had the experience of our other European projects based on tales; and finally, Dina Sensi, who has developed evaluation tools for us in the past for the whole MUS-E programme and who has therefore acquired a good knowledge of the subject.

Large-scale media coverage will be organized at the Foundation by Sophie Lupcin, with relay points in Belgium and in the various countries in which the project will be developed, in connection with the European Commission.

We are convinced that all those skills and competence cannot but produce excellent results and that our project will reach a very large audience. But we hope first and foremost that it will touch the hearts of all those who will take part in it: children and adults, teachers and artists, and those who believe it is possible to share common values, with art being the finest vehicle of all.

Marianne Poncelet

Secretary General of the International Yehudi Menuhin Foundation

Iyouwe SHARE THE WORLD

Project leader: International Yehudi Menuhin Foundation

Co-organizers:

• MUS-E Italia
• Association Menuhin Portugal
• MUS-E Hungary
• MUS-E Scotland
• MUS-E Belgium
• MUS-E France
• Yehudi Menuhin Stiftung Deutschland
• La Maison du Conte in Brussels (Belgium)
• The Roma Education Fund in Budapest (Hungary)
• IRFAM - Research, Training and Action Institute on Migrations (Belgium)