Panel Discussion

The project Being Young is dealing with youth issues, finding new spaces for artistic and cultural expression, active citizenship, acknowledging informal competences and job searching. As part of this project, we have organized a round-table conference on Monday 27th of July 2015 and invited experts who have gladly presented their viewpoints regarding respective topics and offered guidelines for improving the current situation.
The conversation was moderated by Drago Pintarič, the head of the KUD Pozitiv and Project BITI. Each participant had ten minutes for an opening monologue followed by an open debate with the audience. 
After an initial address, social psychologist and communicologist dr. Metka Kuhar was the first to give a speech. She focused on statistical data as presented in different studies of the University of Ljubljana. She pointed out that there is a problem of defining the age span of the youth between the ages of 15 and 29 years, since age span and definition of youth vary from country to country and this could be one of the reasons why the results in Slovenia are so bad when compared to other countries. The studies are focused on issues related to youth education, housing problems, emancipation of young people from their parents and creation of their own families. In all of these issues there is a trend of extending and prolonging of these processes. Thus, it is noticeable that a large portion of Slovenian youth enrolls in universities and other higher education programmes, yet 35% of students fail to finish them. Metka Kuhar also highlighted the fact that from the year 1990 on there is a steady increase of the age span of youth growing up because of studying taking longer time and lesser chances of employment. It is interesting to note that the values of youth aren't as hedonistic as expected since those values mostly encompass friendship, health and families. Kuhar also talked about cooperation with the Faculty of Novi Sad in Serbia and described the studies conducted there which show a large similarity between these two countries when it comes to age span of youth which under Serbian methodology lasts until 35 years of age.
Dr. Uroš Grilc, the head of the office for youth at the City Municipality of Ljubljana, presented the strategy of the municipality on the question of youth issues. The main goals of the project Mladi 2014 – 2024 are the creation of youth centres and influencing the area of employment by gaining the right skills. Currently there are 80 organizations which are dealing with the youth and the municipality has plans to open 20 more centres where young people could gain different business and creative skills. He also mentioned that only one fifth of Slovenian youth is attending extracurricular activities or participating in different clubs, which is an extremely low number.
Notable theatre and movie actress Jasna Diklić stressed that the definition of the period of youth differs from country to country and that there are substantial differences between youth in Ljubljana and youth in other European countries, especially with the youth from Sarajevo. In her opinion young people differ especially when it comes to the chances and the trust they're getting, which gives them a possibility to avoid the negative patterns of social ideology or the sworn-in religion and develop as individual, free and responsible people. As an initiator and creative director of high school theatre festival Juventafest she described the beginning of creating this international festival and its main purpose – social interaction of youth and with it the destruction of stereotypes and dogmas as well as widening horizons and learning about different cultures. It's important to dedicate a lot of energy in youth with the help of communication and mentoring.
Bogdan Janković, actor and leader of the theatre Teatar34 in Novi Sad has also highlighted his personal experiences. His theatre is maintaining itself by establishing smaller amateur theatres, which have enough funds for summer but lack the funding during the winter. Politicians don't offer solutions and are mostly inefficient which is why the situation is not improving. He also mentioned that from the statistical perspective, Serbian youth isn't different from Slovenian youth. As a longterm associate of KUD Pozitiv he also confirmed that intercultural experiences are extremely important for creativity of the youth.
Želimir Želnik, movie producer and pedagogue grew up in a completely different era which was slower and more simple, without modern communication technology. He's mostly known for his documentaries which cover controversial issues and also for his social activism. Because of this Želimir Žilnik is well suited for discussions about the development of youth in the last fifty years. In the »hippy times« of 1968 the youth has (just like today) wondered whether it is possible to achieve social changes. With bringing to light the important moments of modern history and the development of specific countries and the world in general in the 2nd part of 20th century, he imaginatively  illustrated the history of changes and key elements that influenced the status of the youth; the topics of his speech ranged from protests against the war in the Vietnam, development of socialist states and the collapse of Yugoslavia to more modern issues like modern technology and multimedia.
In the open debate with the public there was a lot of talk about general apathy of the youth. In the words of participant of the exchange and member of the Pozitiv group Žan Dolinar, the most problematic group aren't the young people who were counted as unemployed in the researches (about 4800 of them) but young people who're still officialy counted as students (university or high school) but don't actively educate themselves. Also, it is hard to get young people to participate. The classical methods aren't working anymore, because the target group is too passive. One of the reasons is perhaps rooted in the fact that a lot of young people cite privacy - individuality as one of their most important values and by participating in different clubs or institutions they're potentially exposed to public. We asked ourselves, what do young people really need to actively work and participate in different institutions. The answer of local politics is financial funding and setting up new programmes which would encourage young people to participate, but in most cases this isn't enough. Another problem of modern youth is related to the ability to check the credibility of information. We're living in an age where internet search machines and other websites provide us with a lot of information in a matter of seconds. Young people trust this information too much and often don't doubt in credibility thus believing blindly to whatever they have found on the internet. Young people are intelligent and competent but in the ocean of information they can easily be lost. The key is to develop a more sceptical view regarding information found on the internet.
The round-table conference provided to the participants information, personal views, exchange of experiences and comparisson of youth in different environments. What the youth in Slovenia sees as a problem is seen as »sweet worries« to youth in Serbia and especially in Bosnia and Hercegovina.
While this is certainly true to some extent, it is important to note that there are different standards in a more developed European environment and subsequently there are different expectations regarding the youth. In this sense it is worthy to ask ourselves the question that Želimir Žilnik brought up in the debate: does the modern technological »big brother« type of society even need young people?
It certainly doesn't need them for their physical strenght and even less for youth in its metaphorical meaning. During their 14 days of social interaction on BITI festival, young people had a chance to meet and experience the beauty and power of such participation and connection irregardless of their background, their past and their cultural predetermination which they experienced before.