Monday 6 April 2015

Grundtvig meeting Kosice-Slovakia 27/3 - 30/3 2015

 
Subjects:

·        Independant living

·        Job creation

Friday afternoon we arrived in Kosice with a Dutch delegation of 14 people.

Artest members welcomed us on the airport and took us to the town hall to see an art exhibition, made by Japanese youngsters and youngsters from Artest-Kosice (Slovakia )  Two paintings were quite remarkable.

Peter Kalmar (director Artest-Slovakia) welcomed the Hungarian and Dutch delegation. Gerben Lems from the Dutch organisation “Stras” gave a lecture about how to teach practical skills to people with Down syndrome. Modules in fire safety, housekeeping, personal hygiene and healthy food. The audience was very enthusiastic and interested in his program.

The Dutch and Hungarian group had diner in the hotel.
 

Saturday 28th of march:

Theatre performance with Peter Kalmar's group Artest. We started with a warming up. Everybody was invited on stage to sing and dance with a guitar player-singer. Artest gave a performance of a Japanese story of a fisherman on the sea! Interesting was the shadow play in which the foreigners could follow the story! A play of good level! 

In the afternoon time for improvisation theatre. The  groups from Hungary, Slovakia and Holland started with meeting each other by playing animals. Throughout the animal sounds, communication developed between all the players.  A free style play in which every participant could choose his own role. Improvisation led to a full play of 15 minutes.
 


Impressive to see how in short time Marijke Kots, guest director from the Netherlands, and Peter Kalmar from Artest activated the group to play with great enthusiasm.



Tired but very satisfied we left for a pizza together with the Hungarians.

Sunday 29th of march:

Free program in the morning. Some youngsters went to the Zoo! Downkids International and representative from Artest-Slavo Svat had a meeting in which they discussed future plans!
For lunch a special Hungarian dish was served in a museum! Not much appreciated by most guests.

In the afternoon we went to another theatre to see Artest play "the ugly duck" of Andersen. A very nice performance! The Hungarian, Slovakian and Dutch youngsters played their improvisation theatre again.

Due to a smaller stage and a lot of noise of little children playing in the back, the quality of the play was diminished. An extra short rehearsal would have helped to get the right performance. The audience was not informed, that people from abroad were playing!

 Partners from Hungary left after the show!

The Dutch group went to a very nice restaurant in the centre of Kosice.

 Downkids International wants to thank all our Dutch guests for making the trip to Slovakia a big success!
 
We had a lot of fun and we used every minute of the time in Kosice to enjoy our stay!

The open way Down youngsters approach each other and become friends is always a great joy to experience!

 

Downkids International

Len  Dingler               chairman

Jet Stoutenbeek         vice-chairman
 
 
 
 

Thursday 19 March 2015

Very Succesful Fundraise

17th of March 2015

 
Downkids International had a great fundraise evening with Lions Club Noord Holland Centraal.
 
The cinema Cinemagnus in Schagen showed, all for free, a mystery movie for their sponsors.
Downkids received
 for their initiative for developing a “game” for Down youngsters. The purpose of this game is to make the word of Down youngsters wider.
To play with their friends, to play with you, to play with me!
 
 And here is Peter Fokker, Downkids new secretary .......
 
 ......and his daughter Jennifer
 
 

- Len Dingler -





Wednesday 5 November 2014

News from Slovakia - exhibitions and performances

"ALL QUIET ON EASTERN FRONT" could be said here. As soon as conference in Budapest ended, we are still working on spreading the idea of independent life of people with Down syndrome in society. Here are some evidence:






We opened the exhibition in our cultural centre called "We are like You" - showing people with DS in everyday situation.






We performed at family action "We are family" with some Slovak popular actors and singers. We dont´t want special treatment, we want to show, that we are as good as others.






And we are spreading to the east. In Japan city called Hanada near Nagano our artwork is exhibited. They wrote very nice about us, enjoy:

10月3~5日
下諏訪町民総合文化祭
花田養護学校とスロバキアArtEstの子どもたちの作品を展示しています。
3~5 Oct.
Výstava
ArtEst - Hanada artwork
Exhibition in SHIMOSUWA cultural festival