Inter­na­tion­al camp in Munich, Germany

The inter­na­tion­al sum­mer camp in Munich from its begin­ning sig­ni­fied some­thing quite new and unusu­al for the «For­mula of Unity» — and so it turned out to be!

The par­ti­cipants of this small but so mature and excit­ing camp in the cul­tur­al cen­ter «GOROD» were 28 chil­dren aged from 16 to 19 from Rus­sia, Spain, Ger­many, Latvia and Aus­tria. They were divided into 4 groups — «Microwaves», «UR mom», «Eureka!» and «Enrique’s secret angels».

Because of the small num­ber of par­ti­cipants there was only one main sub­ject for the whole «For­mula» which was math­em­at­ics. In addi­tion, twice dur­ing the camp the guys had the oppor­tun­ity to vis­it a deal of choice. Such pro­files were Archi­tec­ture, Socio-Eco­nom­ics, Eco­logy, Inform­at­ics, and the work­shop «Dome it» from the Span­ish par­ti­cipant Alejandro.

The theme was urb­an­ism and a city from all points of view. So each group dur­ing the camp was work­ing on their own pro­ject on urb­an devel­op­ment: urb­an plan­ning, edu­ca­tion and sport, liv­ing area (sleep­ing area), edu­ca­tion and cul­ture (museum of the future). The res­ult of this work was the under­stand­ing of a pro­ject work struc­ture, and design of four devel­op­ment pro­jects from the groups.

The them­at­ic peri­ods of immer­sion into city life were His­tory, Edu­ca­tion, Cul­ture and arts, Environment.

On the 4^th of August (the first day) we had intro­duct­ory math­em­at­ic­al Olympi­ad, the par­ti­cipants were divided accord­ing to their level of know­ledge into three edu­ca­tion­al groups: «Sub­way», «Bus» and «Bicycle». The main events of the day were also a gen­er­al meet­ing in West­park, the Path of Trust and the Camp Opening.

On the 5^th of August (Godly Plans) our friendly com­pany vis­ited the Olympiapark, look­ing at it as a city object as well as a unity of nature and tech­no­logy, and that was the theme for the evening.

On the 6^th of August (Incep­tion) there was an edu­ca­tion­al tour to the Deutsches Museum (Ger­man Tech­nic­al Museum), and after that — the busi­ness game «the City», thanks to which all the par­ti­cipants were able to feel real life bur­eau­cracy and also tried to open their own business.

All the day on the 7^th of August (A Day in the heart of the City) was ded­ic­ated to a city as a whole: in the after­noon the groups had a quest in the old town of Munich. In the even­ing, after sum­ming up their obser­va­tions, they learnt what a pro­ject was, and star­ted work­ing on it.

The 8^th of August (The day of bound­less pos­sib­il­it­ies) was a first day of the peri­od «Edu­ca­tion». It began (after math­em­at­ics) with a vis­it to the Lud­wig-Max­imili­ans-Uni­versität München (Lud­wig Max­imili­an Uni­ver­sity of Munich) and ended with an edu­ca­tion fair, where the guys in the group cre­ated and presen­ted some work­shops or courses that did­n’t exist but could exist.

The 9^th of August (Day of great people) there were two math­battles: «Vil­lage» and «Mega­pol­is». The forces were not equal, but the guys did it! And one of the par­ti­cipants of the camp was con­sidered by teach­ers as so cool that he was even made a second judge :) The even­ing was devoted to dis­cus­sion on import­ant choices in great people’s lives and the guys’ ones.

August, 10^th (Day of cit­ies’ cul­tures) began with the bright­est part of the camp — «Cul­ture and art». In the morn­ing, each team went on a tour asso­ci­ated with their pro­ject: West­park, Edu­ca­tion­al insti­tu­tions in the area of Har­ras metro sta­tion, the urb­an area in the Olympiapark and the Staat­liches Museum Ägyptischer Kunst (State Museum of Egyp­tian Art). In the even­ing there was atmo­spher­ic com­mon cre­at­ive task pre­pared by duty lead­ers and after din­ner we went on a night tour through Munich accom­pan­ied by two nice city care­takers armed with hal­berds, horns and lights.

The morn­ing of August 11^th (The day, when cul­tures unite in the city) cre­ated good mood for the whole day thanks to a vis­it to the incred­ible inter­act­ive Museum Gamelan, where we all played vari­ous music­al instru­ments togeth­er, cre­at­ing a com­mon breath­tak­ing melody. In the after­noon the chil­dren dis­covered games from dif­fer­ent coun­tries and also some new know­ledge of math­em­at­ics, and in the even­ing we had a disco with role play games elements.

On the 12^th of August (The day of the mod­ern City) the pro­ject work was fin­ished, almost all day was ded­ic­ated to it, except for a trip to Munich in search of addi­tion­al inform­a­tion for the pro­ject com­ple­tion. In the even­ing, each group presen­ted their pro­ject, and all par­ti­cipants, who were not involved in the present­a­tions, along with all the teach­ers assessed them accord­ing to the cri­ter­ia of pos­sib­il­ity of its imple­ment­a­tion in the future.

The entire day of August 13^th (The day of the Beauty around us) till the din­ner we enjoyed the moun­tain beauty at the foot of the Neuschwan­stein Castle. But besides aes­thet­ic pleas­ure, the teams also received a task to make short films on the top­ic «Everything is won­der­ful, you just need to look closer», and they were really deep in mean­ing… well, almost :)

On the last day of camp, August 14^th (Good day — good bye), we had to sum­mar­ize the entire camp work using a math­em­at­ics test, pro­jects reviews and the ana­lys­is of the camp in gen­er­al. In the after­noon we went to a really emo­tion­al walk to the river Isar, where we poured a lot of water on each oth­er (and some of us even had a good swim), played vari­ous games and made a lot of bright pic­tures. In the even­ing we had a very warm camp clos­ure that con­tin­ued with group «lights» and a mutu­al good­bye at a fire in Westpark.

It has been a really unique sum­mer camp of «For­mula of Unity», but it, like all oth­ers, has left a lot of emo­tions, pleas­ant memor­ies and strong friend­ship among all its members!