On 20–21 June 2026, Etz Hayyim hosted Multivocality, Visibility and Participatory Art, a two-day synergy event organised by Young Citizens of the World, an associated partner of TCZ. The workshop grew out of Creative Intercultural Dialogue, a local initiative formed by participants of the Hania TCZ training, and was connected to its first Activity Circle, ΑμεΑ και τα Χανιά / AmeA kai ta Hania – People with Disabilities and Hania. The initiative focuses on the visibility and participation of people with disabilities within the cultural and public life of the city.
The workshop brought together teachers, artists, psychologists, parents and people closely connected to the disability community in Hania. It drew on Modules 1, 3 and 5 of the TCZ Curriculum, connecting the Contact Zone, cultural democracy and multivocality with questions of disability visibility and participation. It was facilitated by Konstantin Fischer together with newly certified TCZ trainers Maria Kyvernitaki and Nancy Love, with Michail Kalaitzakis and Nikolaos Kampianakis contributing as artists. The process was built around mutual exchange, giving equal value to professional knowledge, lived experience and the perspectives participants brought into the room.
Participatory art became a way to explore what cultural democracy might look like in practice. In one exercise, My Dream Society, each participant received a large blank piece of a jigsaw puzzle and was invited to draw or write something they would want to see in the society they imagine. The individual pieces gradually came together as one large collective artwork, making visible both the differences between participants’ visions and the shared space they were creating together. The exercise opened conversations around equality, equity and the place of individual needs within a wider community.
A second activity brought these questions directly into Hania. In Multivocality in the Park, participants worked from the perspectives of different social groups and reconsidered an existing public space in the city. Who is able to use it comfortably? Who participates in decisions about it? Who gets to shape the space, and whose needs remain invisible? Participants developed their responses through art and then brought the different perspectives together in a shared discussion about access, participation and ownership of public space.
The weekend also became part of a longer local process. Conversations continued around cooperation between schools, disability organisations, artists, families and community actors, with the emerging Activity Circle looking towards future cultural activities and a joint exhibition involving young people with disabilities and local artists.
Training for the Contact Zone is co-funded by the European Union within the framework of Erasmus+ Adult Education.
