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YAN YANA envisions transforming the successful festival concept of İç İçe into a sustainable organization, creating enduring structures. The project aims to foster connections among similar communities across Europe and beyond. The Fellowship resources will be used to consult with experts and to find a fitting structure to sustain and advance the existing movement. Methodologically, YAN YANA combines entrepreneurship with an anthropological approach and critical thinking. Using open innovation methodology, the project would like to incorporate Melissa’s community’s knowledge to create further offerings.
With planned field trips to Viennna, Brussels, and Dersim, Melissa would like to use anthropological methods to find untold stories and music and get inspiration for how those can be told.
YAN YANA will serve as a nurturing home for the festival and community Melissa Established. Beyond that, it will become a valuable resource, empowering individuals within migrant communities to realize their own project ideas. The organization will serve as a platform for public speaking, guest curation, and providing expertise to support their own scaling-up process and professionalization and to develop strategies and methodologies for other activists.
YAN YANA also aims to accomplish consultative work, as well as historic research offerings to the respective communities to reconnect with their own history.
Kulturbunker in Cologne-Mülheim
In October 2024, in a unique collaboration, the Cologne-based cultural association NEOLA art projects e.V. and the İÇ İÇE Festival from Berlin successfully brought together people from various communities at the Kulturbunker in Cologne-Mülheim. Following a spectacular event in June at its home in Berlin, the festival successfully reached people outside the capital with its carefully curated program.
“It is important to us to open a diverse space of possibilities where multiple affiliations are naturally recognized and celebrated,” Melissa shared about the event, noting it “was a great success, bringing together a new community that had not previously been active in Cologne.”
Updated November 2024
