Body Narratives
Training Course on working with young people and teens through mindful visual arts (PhotoVoice)
Body Narratives
Training course on working with young people and teens through PhotoVoice and other mindful art practices
When: 31/1 – 8/2/2026 (including travel days)
Where: Statek Habří, Moravecké Pavlovice, Czech Republic
For whom: 24 people from Czechia, Italy, Ukraine, Armenia, Romania, and Georgia
“Does sex education encourage sex? Many parents are afraid that talking about sex with their teenagers will be taken as permission for the teen to have sex. Nothing could be further from the truth. If anything, the more children learn about sexuality from talking with their parents and teachers and reading accurate books, the less they feel compelled to find out for themselves.”
– Benjamin Spock, doctor
Main info
✨ What Will Happen During the Training Course? ✨
Over the course of one week, you’ll step into a safe and creative learning space where youth workers, educators, and changemakers from across Europe and beyond come together to explore the power of body, story, and image. Here’s what you can look forward to:
🌍 Meeting & Connecting
From day one, you’ll connect with an international group of peers through dynamic team-building, intercultural evenings, and interactive activities designed to create trust, laughter, and new friendships.
🌀 Exploring Body & Story
Through experiential workshops, you’ll dive into body awareness, movement, and embodied storytelling. You’ll discover how our bodies hold memories and narratives, and how these can be used as powerful tools in youth work.
📸 Creative Practice with PhotoVoice
You’ll learn and practice PhotoVoice – an engaging method that combines photography and storytelling to give young people a voice. Expect hands-on sessions, creative challenges, and lots of space to experiment.
🤝 Co-Creation & Group Projects
Together with your group, you’ll design and produce a creative PhotoVoice project. These will address important social themes such as identity, inclusion, or equality – and culminate in a public exhibition to share your work with the community.
💬 Reflection & Growth
Every day, you’ll pause to reflect on your learning journey, connect experiences to your daily youth work, and plan how to bring new tools home. Youthpass sessions will help you recognise your competences and growth.
🌟 Multiplying Impact
You’ll leave the TC not only with new skills and inspiration, but also with a concrete action plan: how to transfer methods into your youth work, how to share results with your community, and how to continue creating impact.
This Training Course is designed for youth workers, educators, trainers, facilitators, and activists who are actively involved in supporting young people in their communities. We welcome participants who are:
🌍 18+ years old, based in one of the partner countries.
🤝 Motivated to learn and share creative, body-based, and storytelling methods for youth work.
🎨 Open to experimenting with arts, photography, and non-formal education approaches.
🌀 Curious and reflective, willing to explore personal growth alongside professional competences.
💡 Committed to multiplying impact by applying what they learn in their local organisations and communities.
We especially encourage applications from youth workers with fewer opportunities or from diverse backgrounds, as inclusion and diversity are at the heart of this project.
No prior artistic or photography experience is required — only an open mind and a willingness to explore!
- You will take a full part in the whole programme
- You will fill the European Commission form within 1 week after the program
- You will fill the evaluation form send by INspire within 6 weeks after the program, and Impact form send within 3 months after the program.
- You will organize a local performance/exhibition in collaboration with your target group
- You will support spreading the learning from the project by participating in an online campaign, sharing your photo and other results online with hashtags #INspire, #SexEd, #BodyNarratives, #Erasmus+,
and #KA153. - You will support the overall dissemination of the project
- start with filling the application form.
- every partner organization (see below) will select 4 youth workers to take part in the programme.
- if you are selected, you will receive a Confirmation Letter with more information regarding your participation. ONLY then you can start managing your travel arrangements and booking your tickets!
- if you have any questions, please contact us on an email info@czechinspire.eu
Learning Process & Programme
🌀 Body Awareness & Embodied Storytelling
Explore how the body carries experiences and stories. Through movement, mindfulness, and embodied practices, you’ll learn to use the body as a tool for self-expression, resilience, and connection in youth work.
📸 PhotoVoice
A participatory method that combines photography and storytelling to amplify voices that are often unheard. You’ll practice it hands-on — from taking photos to curating a public exhibition.
🤝 Non-formal Education Tools
Team-building, simulations, group projects, and interactive games that make learning collaborative, fun, and engaging.
💬 Reflection & Dialogue
Daily reflection groups, creative journaling, and peer feedback help you connect experiences with your personal and professional growth.
🌍 Intercultural Learning
Living, working, and creating in an international group means constantly learning from diverse perspectives — a method in itself!
1️⃣ Arrival & Connection
We start by building trust, creating a safe space, and getting to know the international group through energisers, team-building games, and intercultural activities.
2️⃣ Exploration of Body & Story
Through embodied practices, movement, and storytelling, you’ll connect with yourself and others in new ways — discovering how body and narrative can be powerful tools in youth work.
3️⃣ Learning PhotoVoice
Step by step, you’ll learn this participatory method: how to tell stories through photography, facilitate the process, and use it to spark dialogue in communities.
4️⃣ Co-Creation & Group Projects
In small teams, you’ll design and implement your own PhotoVoice project, choosing themes that matter to you and your communities.
5️⃣ Public Exhibition
The group projects culminate in a PhotoVoice exhibition, where you’ll share your work with the local community — a powerful moment of visibility, dialogue, and celebration.
6️⃣ Reflection & Future Steps
Each day includes space for reflection, and towards the end, we connect learning to Youthpass and plan how to transfer the tools into your daily youth work.
7️⃣ Departure & Beyond
You leave with new skills, new friends, and concrete action plans — ready to multiply the impact back home.
💡 The programme is dynamic and flexible — it adapts to the needs of the group while keeping a clear flow from exploration to creation to sharing.
* This is a plan but it will most probably change according the current needs of the group. Thus, you have an idea what is coming, but nothing is written in stone.
- program is fully vegetarian
- you will be helping with cooking (and learning on plant-based cooking in the process, under the guidance of our vegan-chief)
- You are expected to fill and European Commission form within 1 week after the program
- You are expected to support an online campaign
- It would be nice if you would organise a learning session for your sending organization, within 1 month after the program
- You are expected to organise workshop/art exhibition with your youth within 6 weeks after the program, using the PhotoVoice method, or anything else from the program
- You have to fill INspire evaluation form within 6 weeks after the program, and Impact form within 3 months after the program
INspire also have to create
- public photo gallery from the project
- a booklet summarizing our activities and methods
We will ask you to support us with disseminating it further.
Accommodation – Statek Habří
- The venue is a pension in the Vysočina region. Forest is nearby, there is a pool, stand-alone studio.
- Rooms will be from 4 to 8 people. The rooms are equipped with bedsheets.
- We are not providing gender separated room, unless it is a psychological or religious necessity (if so, contact Project Supervisor on info@czechinspire.eu who will arrange you extra support).
Website (in Czech).
- There will be 3 meals a day + 2 coffee breaks. The food provided during the program will be an environmentally-conscious vegetarian diet cooked by our amazing vegan chef who will be happy to provide you with information on sustainable and healthy cooking.
- Before the project, we will ask you about your special diet or allergies to arrange your needs in time.
- There are no shops nearby, please bring all the necessary stuff with you.
- In case of need, we can do shopping from time to time, based on availability of our shopping crew.
- Be at Křížanov (district Žďár nad Sázavou) on 4/7/2024 at 18:00. You will be picked-up from there by bus.
- For traveling in Czech Republic, you can use this website: https://idos.idnes.cz/en/vlakyautobusymhdvse/spojeni/
Good tip:
It can be difficult to pronounce names of Czech cities. Put the names on a paper and show it to people! They will try to help.
Travel Reimbursement
The project is co-financed by the Erasmus+ programme.
The costs of the programme, including meals, accommodation, and travel costs (according to the maximum amount of money allowed per country) will be covered by the Erasmus+ programme. Please contact your sending organisation to learn more about the financial details, and how to arrange the booking of your travel tickets.
Very important!
The travel expenses will be reimbursed on the basis of tickets, bookings and invoices, so remember to keep them all with you!
Erasmus+ calculated maximum amount of travel reimbursement you can receive based on the distance band.
Green travel means you are obliged to travel in a sustainable way – that means not by plane, but by bus, train, or carsharing (travelling alone in car is not considered sustainable). If you don’t want to travel green, please, contact project supervisor on info@czechinspire.eu.
| Country | Travel reimbursement limit | Green travel |
| Armenia | €395 | No |
| Czech Republic | €56 | Yes |
| Georgia | €395 | No |
| Italy | €417 | Yes |
| Ukraine | €417 | Yes |
| Romania | €417 | Yes |
As Armenians are required to have visa, we will offer you support with getting it by:
- providing an invitation letter
- covering the visa cost up to €40 per person
- If you are paying any participation fee to your sending organization, we don’t ask for any extra fee.
- If you are send for free, we ask you to pay a €50 participation fee. It will be send to your sending organization to cover their administration hours.
- If you can’t afford to pay any fee, that’s ok. Simply contact your partner organization or Project Supervisor, and they will support you by discussing alternatives (i.e. you help us photos during the project, instead of the fee). We want to make participation open for everybody. All we care about is to have involved and motivated people.
Partner organisations
Project's Team
Zoi Diakoumogiannopoulou
Trainer
Silvia Accattoli
Trainer
I am a multidimensional psychologist, I integrate visual art
and expressive movement in my work, integrating
contemporary, social and pedagogical circus with clinical
aspects. I am a mindfulness trainer and senior instructor and
I use photography in my work from a psychosocial
perspective to promote well-being and change. I love the
image and use techniques such as photovoice,
phototheraphy tecniques and photolangage and self-
portrait to explore topics in groups or individually and
express emotions, thoughts and create narratives. I am a
sports psychologist and I love all forms of movement,
artistic, performative and creative expression.
Vojtěch Žák
Project supervisor
I am a trainer, facilitator, coach, storyteller, and writer.
The main topics I am focused on are the labor market, social inclusion (mainly of the LGBT+ spectrum), and personal development. The main methods I use are storytelling, coaching, systemic work, body movement, art, gamification, and LARP.
I went from a career as a journalist and marketing specialist to becoming a coach, facilitator, and trainer. I have worked for 6 years as a scout leader and later participated in the EVS program at Olde Vechte Foundation in the Netherlands.
info@czechinspire.eu
+420 775 636 658
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Michal Filípek
Kitchen and sustainability facilitator
Plant-based chef, low-waste lifestyle geek and sustainability lover.
From studying French language and literature to Erasmus+ cooking. Long story short, I like cooking more.
I can share with you my experiences in the kitchen, including several years working in a restaurant. My method is simple – everyone can cook.
I believe that a sustainable lifestyle is not a matter of being perfect but implementing small steps into your everyday life. During this project, you will have a chance to experience many of these little steps and see which one is working for you. I will be there to support you!
mifilipek@gmail.com
+421 902 400 626
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