The Beginning of the Story:
The European Coalition of Cities against racism ECCAR, was created by the City of Nuremberg and UNESCO with the objective of working in partnership to fight racism, discrimination and xenophobia.
In October 2004, the Coalition will celebrate its 10 years of existence. An opportunity to take stock and address new challenges.
In this context, the City of Liège and the ECCAR are  invited  the citizen to take part in the organisation of a call for stories of discrimination.
After a given amount of time, these would then be put into the hands of Liège's Conservatory of Music and Theater in order to create a travelling play.

The Goal  of this Project:

This projects originates in the belief in the importance of speaking out, as well as in the power of art. It comes from a desire of deconstruction, illustration and transformation.

• Deconstruction in order to counteract preconceived ideas of what discriminatory attitudes are. They do not always show in big actions, but latent or sometimes hidden facts, small comments, sometimes without bad intentions, sometimes with a clear aim to hurt. If according to Marc Jacquemain, sociologist at the University of Liège, ordinary racism is present as soon as one sees the other as somebody irreductibly different, ordinary discrimination functions in exactly the same way.
• Illustration in order to give multiple real-life and concrete examples of ordinary discrimination. To show their diversity, commonnnes, their possible perversity, harshness. Besides, it is said that speaking out sets one free. At any time, it is possible to share your story by clicking here. In the language that you wish.
• Transformation because the stories are not only collected for illustrative purpose. Liège's Conservatory for Music and Theatre will use them as a basis, an inspiration source (thus not literally and the stories may not be found word by word) for the creation of one or several travelling plays.