The MUTUAL bear was created in order
to promote the project in childcare services. It is a present for the
children in the placements that the partner group visited in the course
of the project.
The MUTUAL bear comes from a large family of bears. He loves travelling
and meeting lots of children in different countries.
The outfit of the MUTUAL bear is a hand-knitted Aran sweater and a “lederhose”.
This was inspired by a book called “The Speckled People” by
the Irish author Hugo Hamilton. In this novel the author illustrates the
complexity of growing up with a mixed cultural background and trying to
find his own identity. He manages to draw a vivid picture of his childhood
where stereotyping and scapegoating were part of the everyday life. He
achieves to create a breath taking story that shows the effect discrimination
and exclusion has on the individual child. Here
is the key passage from the book:
“Then one day my mother and father did a funny
thing. First of all, my mother sent a letter home to Germany and asked
one of her sisters to send over new trousers for my brother and me.
She wanted us to wear something German – lederhosen.
When the parcel arrived, we couldn’t wait to put them on and run
outside, all the way down the lane at the back of the houses. My mother
couldn’t believe her eyes. She stood back and clapped her hands
together and said we were real boys now. No matter how much we climbed
on walls or trees, she said these German leather trousers were indestructible,
and so they were. Then my father wanted us to wear something Irish too.
He went straight out and bought hand-knit Aran sweaters. Big, white,
rope patterned, woollen sweaters from the west of Ireland that were
also indestructible. So my brother and I ran out wearing lederhosen
and Aran sweaters, smelling of rough wool and new leather, Irish on
top and German below. We were indestructible. We could slide down granite
rocks. We could fall on nails and sit on glass. Nothing could sting
us now and we ran down the lane faster than ever before, brushing past
nettles as high as our shoulders.
When you’re small you’re like a piece of white paper with
nothing written on it. My father writes down his name in Irish and my
mother writes down her name in German and there’s a blank space
left over for all the people outside who speak English. We’re
special because we speak Irish and German and we like the smell of these
new clothes. My mother says it’s like being at home again and
my father says your language is your home and your country is your language
and your language is your flag. But you don’t want to be special.
Out there in Ireland you want to be the same as everyone else, not an
Irish speaker, not a German (…).”
(Hugo Hamilton, The Speckled People 2003)
So the clothes of the MUTUAL bear are a symbol
for trying to make children “indestructible”.
In MUTUAL this is meant in a figurative sense: We believe that every
child has a right to have their culture acknowledged and respected.
If this happens the child will feel valued and will be strengthened
and prepared for the various challenges in life…
The MUTUAL bear has travelled to…
• a multicultural kindergarten in Graz/Austria,
• two childcare-services in Amsterdam/Netherlands,
• two kindergartens in Kristiansand in Norway,
• a bilingual kindergarten in Osijek in Croatia,
• a kindergarten in Copenhagen/Denmark,
• and to the FEG Bilingual Kindergarten in Iasi/Romania.
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