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Jardin des Rêves (Garden of Dreams) is an empowering socio-cultural animation and community development program for people disadvantaged by the system. It was first initiated for the social target group of people with refugee or migrant backgrounds and has been facilitated since then by artist and social designer IPek. At its core are women, families, children, and young people who, in a familiar atmosphere of creative workshops and collaborative mural paintings, come together to access personal empowerment through art and crafts. Since its creation in 2022, it has taken place in different combinations of cooperation, mostly with associations of people with refugee backgrounds in Basel, Athens, Aarau, and Zürich. With its colorful palette of activities—like open calls for motifs, community paintings, and percussion workshops—Jardin des Rêves creates temporary spaces designed to let people feel empowered and connected.

Jardin des Rêves is rooted in IPek’s experience in socially engaged art and activism for people with a refugee background. From her early years as a street artist, IPek organized local communities around her wall paintings. She worked with schools and teenagers, people living on the street, and locally engaged citizens in both small towns and major cities. Everything she learned from these diverse communal art experiences forms the basis of the workshops she organizes when working with groups of people disadvantaged by the system.

Jardin des Rêves focuses on two kinds of experience.
The craft workshops are organized around a table. We all need a place where we can be alone with our thoughts, where we can digest the challenges of our lives. Specially in case of forced migration, that often is accompanied by trauma. Jardin des Rêves workshops are designed to develop communities to be together and still provide a personal privacy through a concentrated presence around a craft like beading, painting, or sewing. The main aim is to create a temporary intimate space for people who have less access to intimate spaces. The workshops are not just relaxing to visit, but they inspire people on the move to create their own privacy through indulging in an activity that does not need a lot of space or material.

The communal paintings are organized around a wall. Their aim is to create a temporary group of people, where everyone has a role to contribute in a communal action. People in need often have no specific role in society. They have no work, nor a proper household to take roles in. A mural serves like a theatre setting: it creates a team with goals, roles, and a visible, joyful result. It shows that our society needs every kind of people: those who bring the water and food, those who mix the colors, children to laugh around, and older people to sit and discuss while others paint.

The most important goal is to welcome people disadvantaged by the system and foster their self-confidence by empowering their creativity in a safe space. The time spent together encourages the exchange of thoughts and ideas, supported by a flexible structure of labor and skill-sharing.

Would you like to invite IPek to give a lecture on Jardin des Rêves or lead a communal design project at your orphanage, social center, festival, juvenile prison, or cultural institution?
Contact IPek here

This section is under construction. More information about the activities of Jardin des Rêves will follow shortly.

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