Workshop of Life, A Complete Prevention Program in Larissa, Greece
Abstract
Workshop of Life is an innovative project that has been founded in 2015, in Greece, and it combines the most updated Prevention techniques with various forms of Art. The main aim is the learning or/and the development of psychosocial skills in the safe environment of a group.
Our basic tool is building local functional communities, where children, adolescents and adults have the opportunity to exercise their psychosocial skills, abandon the non-functional ones and adopt new, if needed. The innovative part is that different forms of artistic expression are being used in order to facilitate the process.
The Workshop of life consists, at current time, of 33 groups of children, adolescents and adults that continued to function, on line and live, through the Covid-19 pandemic.
Each group is coordinated by a social scientist and a person expert in each artistic subject. This group of trainers receive a long-term training in all recent and effective techniques in Prevention and Experiential Learning.
All the work produced by the 33 groups is spread to the community through special events.
The acceptance of the Workshop of Life from the local coomunity is impressive. It has reached a growth in participants of almost 50 % since 2015.
The participants believe that being a member of group in Workshop of Life helped them have a better communication with themselves and others . The vast majority of them answered that they want to participate in the Workshop of Life during next year. The Workshop of life is a complete and innovative Prevention program that combines in a very successful way, Prevention and Art. Its award with the Pompidou Prevention Prize 2018 as one of the best Prevention practices, the continuation of funding from the Region of Thessaly, Greece and the impressive growth of participants show the size of success.