A boost for garage TDI in Assen. The Youth Theater has received 100,000 euros from the Elja Foundation. Spread over two years, Garage TDI wants to continue to work with young people in creative meeting places with the money.
The Elja Foundation, a philanthropic fund that focuses on cultural projects for children aged 4 to 18, chose four organizations in the Netherlands that are eligible for the so -called ‘Elja Art Courts’. Young people can come together and be busy with art.
“It is comparable to the Cruyff Courts for Sport,” explains Head of Education Roel Tichelaar on behalf of Garage TDI. “Young people can get to know art and culture in an accessible way.”
Last year, Elja Foundation asked a number of institutions to write a plan about how they build a community in which young people come into contact with art and culture, meet each other and develop creatively. The plan that Garage TDI wrote was appealing to the lender.
This has to do with the fact that the Assenaren already have an existing community with Move Your Ass. “In it, young people follow workshops, eat together, a show is played in the evening and they all do a game together. It is a place where young people can let go of everyday troubles,” says Tichelaar.
The Elja Art Courts start in 2025 and run up to and including 2026. Garage TDI wants to go with the money Move Your Ass preserved and with the province touring. “We are going to land our mobile theater, which looks like a spaceship, twice a year else in Drenthe. At that location we are going to do workshops with young people from the region. Or they can perform there themselves.”
Garage TDI consciously opts for the countryside, because something is usually organized in the field of art and culture in the larger cities. It is not yet known in which places the mobile theater will be placed. Garage TDI strives for as much spread as possible through Drenthe.
The ASSER Jeugdtheater has been working on Move Your Ass. “We thereby have a fixed group of about twenty young people who have an affinity with art and culture. They might not find the right connection at school, but with Move Your Ass they come to the same goal. They connect very quickly. This way, art and culture has a great social goal. “