Urban Soul on ciNews site
The following article recently featured on the Catholic Ireland News website
Day to day living out of Christianity in the local community is the focus of Urban Soul 2009, which runs from the 7th-10th of July.
Greg Fromholz, who is a co-director on the team organizing the Dublin event and a musician, enjoys the many music events for young people and the Christian ones are very uplifting. However he felt some frustration and wanted more than a fleeting, albeit uplifting, moment. Hence Urban Soul, where the young people mix social action by day, with the music by night.
Music has always been part of youth events, even at Knock, according to Greg Fromholz.
“What is changing is a growing dissatisfaction with the existing church communities. There is a desire to go beyond. So we have had events with bands for the last 20 yrs or so, but it hasn’t really yielded the sort of growth in young men and women that we are looking for so that is why we have added the social aspect. We are trying to encourage people to wake up to what is around them and not walk past a homeless person but to actually stop and talk to them, offer a sandwich or at least ask their name,” he says.
Since the first Urban Soul last year, many of the social projects continued on. One of those is called A C E T (Aids Care Educational Training) and involves doing creative arts with young people which helps them to share what is going on in their lives.
“It has become a weekly thing that is impacting around the city. The hope is that other projects will be the same. A lot of existing projects are lacking volunteers so we hope some of our young people will keep it up,” Greg Fromholz told ciNews.
This year the practical projects include creating a community garden in St Michael’s Estate near Thomas Street and painting at Our Lady of Lourdes primary school, as well as working with the homeless.
“This is one of my issues with one off concerts and events – they are great for the day and I do enjoy them, but I am frustrated with things that only last for a moment. The idea is that we need to serve each other daily,” Greg Fromholz explains.
The event runs from the 7th-10th of July 2009, and up to 200 teenagers from Dublin, Belfast, United States, the UK and Africa will come together to work on the above projects and others. They stay in Jacobs hostel and spend the first couple of hours every day together at The Exchange, Gardiner Street, for physical (coffee) and spiritual nourishment before setting off at 11 am to work on projects all day. The evenings are a time for celebration with some well known DJs and bands and a café where people can relax and chill out.
International speakers and musicians include Mark Ritchie and Andy McCourt, International Singer and musician Paul Baloche and Drive.
Urban Soul is an active citizenship programme for teenagers aged 15 years old and over. The organising team comprises of various Christian traditions and nationalities, all reaching to achieve the same goal. For further information see http://www.urbansoul.eu.
