The first step is to establish a connection with a local youth club, school or other organization through which you can reach your target group. Explain what you have in mind and discuss if it would be possible to ‘hijack’ their art curriculum with a series of creative workshops. Ideally, you would reach an audience from different age groups (between 7 and 16 years old). Apart from youth institutions, you will also need to contact other organizations that you will be working with early onward, such as libraries and archives. It is usually easier to contact teachers and animators directly rather than directors of institutions; the people who work together with the children on a day-to-day basis are more likely to make an effort and feel engaged.

Assemble a team of engaged artists, animators, teachers, representatives of institutions, and other neighbours. You will need people on board who are experienced in working with kids as well as people who know how to edit videos and sound recordings. Make sure they all know what the aim of the project is, and what is expected of them. Keep your core team small, three is perfect, as long as all necessary skills are included.

If you secure funding for your project, make sure that you know the sponsor’s agenda. In Lublin, for instance, the Estate Collage was financed with municipality money and had to tap into municipal strategies and policies for cultures. Part of this was to visit particular institutions, such as the multimedia archive. Use these kinds of requirements to your own benefit, establish strong collaborations and make us of existing working methods.

The most important part is to organize a series of creative workshops for the children. As part of these workshops, you take them to the archives and libraries that you are collaborating with. Here, they discover essential information about the history, design and demographic of their neighbourhood, from an animator as well as from their own exploration of the available material. They learn how to use a multimedia library and collect images, videos and recordings of their immediate surroundings now and in the past. Focus specifically on the perspectives of minorities, and ask the children ‘What would you do if…?’ or ‘How would you feel if…?’. Have the children combine their findings in small art pieces, such as comics or postcards. Another part of the workshop series is to teach the participants the basics of sound recording, sound editing, image animation and film editing. This is important for the next step of your project.

After the children have learnt more about the context of the estate as well as how to record and edit audiovisual material, take them outside onto location to create their own multimedia content. Have them look for specific sites that they feel are not accessible to all of the inhabitants of the neighbourhood, and that they would like to see changed. You could even task the children to interview passers-by about what they feel is missing. Spark their interest and creativity!

By now, the participants have created an enormous amount of artistic content. All that is left to do, is to assemble the Estate Collage! The best thing to do is to find a professional film editor to put together all of the material and polish it.

Present the Estate Collage as part of a larger event, like a project presentation or a local celebration. Invite the parents of the participants and the representatives of the institutions you worked with. By using an existing infrastructure or programme, your outreach will be bigger.