Cinedojo is young people's safe space for cinema

What's Cinedojo?

Cinedojo is a moving image literacy project with a participatory approach. Aimed at young people, it creates a safe space for critical thinking and improved wellbeing, using cinema programming as a trigger. Cinedojo embraces cinetherapy approaches and the IT Coder Dojo methodology to engage young people. It is also inspired by the international programme "Le Cinema, cent ans de jeunesse" and its way of thinking. 

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Cinedojo doesn't teach. It provokes.

It engages participants through regular, in-person sessions where they're presented with exercises. Each session is an opportunity to discover something new and to interact and discuss ideas with others. Finally, participants programme and present a public film programme.

It's an "open your eyes" initiative. It's not an educational project.

The project was developed under Memórias Emergentes, a non-profit association based in Lisbon (Portugal), designed gathering experiences and insights from projects in the UK, Spain, France and other countries. The second edition will be activated in 2015 in Liverpool City Region, UK.

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Pilot was key to fine tune

The first edition, approached as a pilot, was concluded in early 2024. It allowed to gather key learnings about what was meaningful for participants and important for the arts practitioners team. For the young group, the best was to socialize with peers, discover new realities and discussions to have in film, visiting venues for the first time, and feeling more confident in different contexts. For the team that facilitated the project, it was important to observe that participants engagement depends on time taken in the project, stable working context for the sessions is crucial and constant adaptation to the group's dynamic helps for a smooth process.

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