Make your own films That s what you can try out in this international media camp. Learning by doing is the way forward, and in small groups you can do this by gathering and experimenting with new ideas. After an introduction to the technology involved, you can develop a storyline and get the cameras ready to dive straight into filming. Whether a short film with yourselves as actors or a documentary i you can tell your own little story. Your fantasy will be set free and there will be no limits. As well as learning how to handle the camera and how to use various software, you ll also learn how to edit and and add sounds to your films on the computer. Throughout the creative process, you will be supported by an experienced media instructor from Blickwechsel e.V. You will be able to enjoy the finished products online, since they ll be uplaoded to an internet blog.
Accomodation & food:
You ll be sleeping on air mattresses in a small, cosy youth centre. You ll cook your own meals together.
Location & leisure:
Your accommodation lies in the trendy neighbourhood in the middle of the city. From there you can visit the 1200 years old town of Bremen - with its many sights, cultural opportunities, nightlife and shopping centres. At the weekends, it s possible to take day trips to the coast of the North Sea, to Hamburg and to other cities in Germany.
Requirements:
An interest in cinema, film editing and the techonlogy involved is necessary.
In this workcamp in the heart of the Lauenburg Lakes Nature Park, east of Hamburg, you will be entrusted with many aspects of nature. You ll get to know many different ecosystems and will work on renaturation tasks in a forest and on a moor. You ll also build small dams on the moor, clear heather areas free from growing shrubbery, build fences, get rid of unpopular black cherries from woodlands and create nests for birds. Passionate and experienced nature experts from the project management Integrierte Station Lauenburgische Landschaften , WWF, the Lauenburg Lakes Nature Park and the town of Molln (Uhlenkolk) will be on board to offer support. This workcamp is for true nature lovers, since you ll be sleeping in wooden huts that aren t completely closed and will therefore definitely need a warm sleeping bag. Cooking and eating together, as well as many free-time activities, will also take place outside.
Accomodation & food:
You ll be staying in basic wooden huts i bring your thermal mat and sleeping bag. You will cook your own meals together.
Location & leisure:
Molln lies in the wonderful Lauenburg Lakes Nature Park , with its unique landscape and appealing lakes, which offer the chance to go swimming or canoeing. Besides this, in your free time you could go on a bat or bird-spotting excursion. The world heritage town of Lubeck and the metropolis Hamburg are also not too far away.
Requirements:
Work clothes and waterproof shoes are absolutely necessary. Fitness for physically demanding work is required, as is the ability to ride a bicycle.
In collaboration with the employees of the Wahnbach reservoir management authority, you will be undertaking various conservation projects around the reservoir. Firstly, the touch-me-not around the tributaries must be removed, to avoid it driving out other local plant species. Secondly, you ll be building birdhouses and repairing the barriers all around the Wahnbach reservoir. If there s time, you ll be checking over the sign posts along nearby paths and renewing them if necessary.
Accomodation & food:
You ll be staying in an idyllic but remote scouts house in rooms with several beds. You ll cook your own meals together.
Location & leisure:
The camp is in a very nice region of Germany: rural, but also with big cities like Cologne, Bonn and Dusseldorf all nearby. It s therefore very easy to go on many different day trips during the camp. In the town of Much (10km away) there is an outdoor swimming pool, and the scouts house has large outside grounds with a camp-fire area. Other cities along the river Rhein include Koblenz and Mainz.
The municipality of Trassem is located within the border triangle of France, Germany and Luxembourg, and therefore in the heart of Europe itself. With your help, we will continue building on the various components of our natural history station Walderlebniszentrum Trassem (Trassem s forest experience centre). You can expect to work together with young people from the local region on the restoration of an old Kelterstation (cider press) as well as other diverse tasks, such as building dry-stone walls with natural stones, maintenance work on the forest experience path and on the attractive free-ride/mountain bike trails. Not only can you experience many things to do with forests and nature and a wide spectrum of nature-related activities, but you can also be strongly involved with the organisation and design processes. This year we would also like you to co-operate and work together with the young people of the nature conservation association, der Deutschen Waldjugend. Through introducing you to people from the region, we see a real chance for us to give you a better understanding of our regional and cultural specialities. The larger town closest to us is Trier. As the oldest town in Germany, it was even the imperial city of residence during Roman times and has therefore earned its title as The Rome of the North . Particularly worth a visit
Accomodation & food:
You will stay in the local Trassem community centre. You ll cook your own meals together.
Location & leisure:
Trassem is in the wonderful wine town of Saarburg, with its historical castle ruins and picturesque old town, complete with waterfall. As well as interesting sights, there are also numerous free time opportunities in Saarburg, such as the street cafes, an outdoor swimming pool and a park for birds of prey. You also have the opportunity to canoe along the Saar river and to climb the steep cliffs of Saartal. Because our project Walderlebniszentrum Trassem has been running for many years, you will be able to admire the efforts of previous workcamp participants. Alongside a large seminar building (a log cabin with an annex), a forest workshop, an outdoor barbecue area and various establishments of the Walderlebnispfades Trassem , the Waldklasszimmer (Waldarena) has also been finished. With your enthusiasm and energetic efforts, you too can leave your mark on our facilities during this year s workcamp. Besides this, there are many opportunities during the workcamp for excursions to Trier, Saarbrucken, Luxembourg and France.
Following the motto i sleeping under the stars i 4 overnight cabins will be built on the grounds of the youth camp in Vestenbergsgreuth. The special thing about these cabins is that they have glass rooves, through which the stars in the sky above the camping area can be seen. During the workcamp, we ll be decorating the cabins with wood and putting down the flooring. Also, with your help, the youth overnight cabins will be renovated with a new color scheme, making them look more attractive. We ll choose the colours together, then we ll redecorate all of the rooms with environmentally-friendly paint. Outside, we would like to have a stone mosaic in front of the entrance to the kitchen. Note: Arrival on Sunday 10.07. Transfers from Erlangen train station at 14:00 and 18:00. Departure on Saturday 30.07. 10:00 transfer to Erlangen train station
Accomodation & food:
4-bed rooms in an overnight house. More info at www.kjr-erh.de You ll cook your own meals together.
Location & leisure:
We, the local youth association, will support you with the organisation of your free time. You ll have a minibus for excursions to nearby places. The towns Erlangen, Nurnberg, Bamberg und Wurzburg offer numerous possibilities. Besides this, we would like to go climbing with you in Franconian Switzerland and to get to know the charming historical monuments of the region. In Vestenbergsgreuth there is a summer toboggan run with a beer garden, in the house where you ll be staying there are games, table football, table tennis and an internet connection. There are also some outdoor swimming pools nearby.
Requirements:
Manual labour, sometimes strenuous, strong shoes necessary, very rural area, bad public transport connections
Altenburger Land, between Zwickau and Leipzig, boasts several protected buildings over a rich cultural landscape, some of which are awaiting renovation: a 110 year old comprehensive school, a Quellenhof in Garbisdorf built in 1552, a timbered house in Lumpzig built over 300 years ago. There you will be helping with the renovation projects by carrying out more traditional handiwork, building with natural resources such as loam and chalk, learning how to restore old lumbers and even doing maintenance work on modern wooden sculptures. Since the town has shown a very open mentality with regards to refugees, you also have the possibility with your camp to work with people who have fled from their own country and to organise your own free time activities.
Accomodation and food:
1. Altenburg, indoor accommodation in the school on camp beds. 2 Quellhof Garbisdorf, in tents. 3. The postmill in Lumpzig, in tents. You’ll cook your own meals together (with basic cooking facilities).
Location & leisure:
ALTENBURG/GARBISDORF/LUMPZIG
At the end of the working day, you are free to discover the town of Altenburg. You can climb old towers here, visit the residential castle, with its own church and world-famous Trost organ, explore the “Flasche” (bottle) with an all-round picture of Thüringen, go to the Lindenau-Museum and much more. You can also visit the exciting towns of Leipzig, Halle or Berlin. Every Sunday you will change your workplace and accommodation. For this, you will take a bike trip to the next location, allowing you to enjoy the wonderful nature in the surrounding areas, as well discovering castles, mansions, pretty little village churches, lakes and outdoor swimming pools.
Requirements:
You should enjoy practical, manual and physically demanding work. It’s important to enjoy cycling and all participants need to be able to ride a bike. A desire to camp and to live amongst nature is also preferred.
At the Heiligensee cemetery, north-west of Berlin, you and your team will be helping with maintenance work on the graves of war victims. There are both German and non-German soldiers and civilians, for whom a war grave cemetery was created. Together with your team you ll be helping to mow and restore grassy areas and, amongst other things, cleaning gravestones and concrete frames. Besides this, you ll be repairing fencing surrounding one section of the cemetery. You will only be working 4 days per week, so will therefore have the opportunity to not only enjoy Berlin s wide range of free-time activities, but also to take advantage of walking tours related to this topic (culture, history, East-West Germany and Berlin...).
Accomodation & food:
You will be staying in the Berlin-Tegel castle. You ll cook your own meals together.
Location & leisure:
The accommodation is near to the Tegeler Fliess nature reserve, therefore your group has many opportunities for outdoor games and walks. This is also true of the wider surrounding area, where you can easily reach both Mecklenburg and Rheinsburg lakes, the Spree forest and the Oder river, as well as many more beautiful landscapes. The city centre of Berlin is just 30 minutes away, so you ll receive a Cityticket to use on all public transport across Berlin for the duration of the camp.
Die Weltbuhne (The Global Stage), is a cultural centre with a large theatre hall in a former village inn in Heckenbeck, a small village with only 450 inhabitants. Every year, the villagers look forward to an international theatre project i for 2 weeks long, you and the rest of your group are therefore invited to the village as guests, to get to know the local community and to develop your own international theatre piece, under the guide of a drama teacher. Living Utopia i forming a community is the theme of this production. The small Heckenbeck community is a brilliant example with which to explore this topic. But your group itself will also try out communal living and investigate various advantages and pitfalls of cohabitation. At the end of the camp there will be an interactive performance, during which you will present your findings to the spectators from Heckenbeck and the surrounding region.In Heckenbeck there is an exciting mixture of traditional and experimental rural life, of traditional residents of rural areas and people who move to the countryside from further afield. There is an organic grocery store, organic vegetable patches, crafts workshops, an independent school and many clubs to enjoy. The KuK club, a club for culture and communication is one such possibility and has been using the former Zur Linde village inn as a cultural centre since the end of 2000. The club offers a high-calibre evening programme in the main hall of the building, with many notable artists a very intimate atmosphere.
Accomodation & food:
You ll be staying in the Weltbuhne Heckenbeck cultural centre. You ll cook your own meals together.
Location & leisure:
Heckenbeck is situated in a very rural area. There will be bicycles available for day-trips and for going shopping. The town of Bad Gandersheim is just 4km away. Possible destinations that are easily reachable by train are Alfeld (with its Fagus Factory World Heritage Site) or the mining museums of Harz.
Requirements:
A good knowledge of Englisch is necessary for the theatre workshop. Participants should be able to ride a bike.
« The most beautiful thing about volunteering obviously is the people you meet… the helpfulness the understanding…there is always someone who puts a plate of food in front of you if you say you are not hungry and not in the mood, or gives you a pep talk or simply a hug. »
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