Purpose: The Equality Space (Espace Égalité) hosts a one-of-a-kind experience for children and young adults to get familiar with 26 discrimination criteria and fully understand the impact of discriminatory behaviours so to prepare to counter those. It is an interactive and playful experience to confront children, youngsters and adults with real situations of discrimination, so to develop their critical thinking.
Stimulus/Rationale: The Equality Space has been set up after numerous exchanges carried out by local anti-discrimination actors and city officials in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks in Paris in 2015. A pilot project was tested in the framework of the Equality and anti-discrimination weeks, organised since 2016 to raise citizens’ awareness about equality and non-discrimination.
Since 30 September 2019, the Equality Space has become an all-year-round experience, having been allocated a permanent space by the city of Strasbourg. The project is currently coordinated by the anti-discrimination department of the city of Strasbourg, in partnership with various community services (including the Directorate of children and education) and other local stakeholders and associations, and with the support of the Academic directorate of the departmental service of national education and urban policy.
Process: The “Espace Égalité” is composed of different rooms and spaces where visitors are invited to live different experiences linked with equality of with discrimination, while accompanied by skilled personnel who mediates and facilitates all the interactions. The experience is of course adapted according to the age of the group and the learning needs. The spaces proposed are usually not visited all together and groups can come back several times to try different activities or explore different areas and topics. Through a wide variety of workshops, visitors learn about human rights and those who have fought to get and defend these rights; they learn about gender equality, sexual orientation, immigration or multilingualism, among others. They become familiar with a whole set of criteria to identify discrimination and understand that discriminatory behaviours are contrary to the law and how to denounce these before the judiciary. Visitors can also have different experiences about diversity of identities, families, origins, backgrounds, languages, scriptures, religions, places and ways of life.
Impact/outcomes: The Equality Space has been visited by an increasingly high number of children and youth; the interest raised about the Space has conducted the city to grant a bigger space to the project, as well as to increase its opening hours and the target public: university students (pedagogy), community mediators, teachers from formal and informal education can now book guided visits to the Space for training purposes.
For more information: L’Espace Égalité : un lieu dédié | Strasbourg.eu (French only)
