Today, I would like to take this opportunity to share with all of you the 1st Teacherpreneur Award for Primary Education, launched by the Faculty of Education and Sport at the University of Deusto, thanks to the Teaching Innovation Unit.
UNIC (English version)
Last week (3-9 November) was a week packed with professional events and activities. One of these events was the Working Conference held on the 4th, 5th and 6th at the University of Deusto as part of the UNIC alliance, in which I was able to actively participate.
For those of you who are not familiar with it, UNIC (European University of Cities in Post-Industrial Transition) is a European alliance that was created in 2020 and is part of the European Commission’s European Universities Initiative. It is made up of 10 universities whose main objective is to develop innovation for inclusive and super-diverse higher education, and city-university cooperation for greater social and community impact.
UNIC has 7 thematic lines (TL) and 6 work packages (WP), which are led by one or more universities in the alliance and include representatives from all the universities in the alliance.
In my case, I am working with an interdisciplinary and inter-university team of creative and innovative individuals to promote equally innovative approaches to teaching, learning and mobility, especially virtual mobility, among teachers and students. For me, this is an eminently entrepreneurial endeavour in which, every time we meet (at least once a month), we try to work towards innovative education by generating ideas that help us move forward in an increasingly complex society.
Through the WP I collaborate with, we have created the UNIC CTL Teaching and Learning Centre, which encompasses key units for teaching, learning and mobility. Our goal is to consolidate the work done in previous years and deepen institutional collaboration for greater sustainability, innovation and shared resources. At the CTL, we design training courses and educational materials, and propose spaces for the promotion of educational innovation.
During the Working Conference, we had the opportunity to explore how colleagues from the other nine universities perceive educational innovation within the alliance. To do this, our WP prepared a world café to stimulate an activity that gave us some clues to continue our work.
Today, I would also like to highlight the opportunity I had to exchange opinions, points of view and, of course, business cards (yes, the traditional kind) with colleagues from the Universities of Koc (Turkey), Cork (Ireland), Erasmus (Netherlands), Ruhr University Bochum (Germany), Malmö (Sweden) and Zagreb (Croatia). All of them make proposals on entrepreneurial education, each from their own post-industrial and diverse contexts and possibilities. For me, it was a unique opportunity to be able to share with people from so many different universities who have something in common, which is a commitment to entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial people. So today, without a doubt, the UNIC alliance deserves a space in this blog!
Sounds of Nature
And then she arrived, Shrabani.
Shrabani Aranzabe-Pita is a young entrepreneur born in India but raised in Alkiza, a village in Gipuzkoa (Basque Country). As a child, she dreamed of becoming an orchestra conductor, and today, at 25, she can say she has achieved her goal. She has no lack of motivation; she has perseverance to spare; she has more creativity than you might think; she has initiative. I could go on naming each and every one of the entrepreneurial competences identified by the European framework for entrepreneurial competence (EnreComp). But Shrabani is much more than a set of skills. She is an entrepreneur who, at only 25 years old, has lived a great adventure and a journey that is difficult to forget.
Shrabani has always ‘liked everything,’ from sports to science, helping others, education, culture, research, and inclusion. But above all, what she loved and was passionate about was being an orchestra conductor. Without her knowing it, her journey was going to be full of what she calls ‘failures’, what others would call obstacles, large and medium-sized stones and the occasional pebble, the kind that are not uncommon to find along the way and which, as in Shrabani’s case, have made her stronger and stronger.
When she began her higher education, she decided to study for a double degree in Basque Language and Basque Culture + Modern Languages at the University of Deusto, but she soon realised that this was not what she liked best. That was when she decided to go all out to get into Musikene, the Higher Music Centre of the Basque Country. It wasn’t easy, but she succeeded. The problem was, among other much less important issues, that Shrabani was diagnosed with cancer in her head, which she had to fight (and fight hard). Even so, she wanted to continue her training and commit to education, art and inclusion, although COVID-19 arrived unexpectedly. Not even this pandemic stopped this woman, who, after completing a degree in Music at the International University of La Rioja and a Master’s degree in Research and Innovation in Music Education and Pedagogy at the Autonomous University of Madrid, still had the strength (and plenty of it) to pursue a PhD in neuroscience and education. Because Shrabani was passionate about science and improving education and training.
As she says, this is her CV A, but Shrabani has another CV, CV B.
This CV B is full of many other lessons learned. From a very early age, Shrabani wanted to work in culture and art in a different way from what she had been taught, and she did so. She created a mini-association through a music classroom in her village, Alkiza. She has been dedicated to this since 2016. It was then that she realised that ‘things’ cannot depend on one person alone, that no one is indispensable, and that for ‘something’ important not to disappear, a team of people is needed.
In 2017, Shrabani created the youth singing school with a clear goal: ‘to learn to sing’. Then came the Tolosa Youth Choir (TAG), with a goal that went a little further: ‘to create community’. And so we come to 2021, when she created ‘Naturaren Doinuak’ (Sounds of Nature), with the aim of achieving personal development and helping people to transform themselves. In fact, ‘it currently aims to promote comprehensive development and participation in the field of education, using artistic experiences as a tool, especially with vulnerable groups.’
And so, what began as a project is now a foundation, of which Shrabani is the chief executive officer and artistic director (orchestral and choral), as well as managing the festival that bears the same name, Naturaren Doinuak.
As she says, ‘Thanks to Naturaren Doinuak, we are tackling the challenge of equity and inclusion through education and art.’ It is a joint venture, a social project and a business venture. Among the activities they carry out, the following stand out:
- Training.
- Research.
- Cultural consulting.
- Audiovisual production, software creation.
- Own festival (2021, 2023, 2024 and 2025).
Naturaren Doinuak began in 2021 as a response to COVID-19 in the form of a concert in the forest. From there, it grew into a one-day fair. After contacting ASPANOGI, the third festival brought together associations and schools: it became a three-day event with more than 4,000 visitors and socially excluded people (autistic people) as the protagonists.
Where will you go, Shrabani?
I’m sure the Inspira Gazteak award you recently received from the Kutxa Foundation is just a preview of what lies ahead.
If you want to hear Shrabani, here’s a nice radio interview with her:
https://www.eitb.eus/es/nahieran/radio/radio-euskadi/vivir-para-ver/detalle/9687207/
Shrabani, Let us raise a toast to the Princess of Girona Foundation, which gave us the opportunity to meet!
Ahmad Joudeh, dance or die
Fair Saturday Awards were launded in 2017 in Bilbao, if not, where?. Its goal was clear:
“Recognizing, at an international level, the initiatives of inspiring individuals and organizations that have proven to generate social impact through art and culture.”
It was a few years earlier when I had the opportunity to meet one of the people behind this initiative, Saioa Eibar, and a little later, its founder, Jordi Albareda. These two people have already a place in this blog. In fact, this is not the first time I have mentioned them. Their social entrepreneurship deserves a Fair Saturday Award, and many more.
This time, I would like to introduce you to another entrepreneur (P.E.), whom I had the honour of meeting during the awards ceremony just a week ago at the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao.
This year 2025, the awarded people were the following ones:
- Joseph Stiglitz, Nobel Prize in Economics 2001 (Indiana)
- Martin Wolf, Chief Economics Commentator – Financial Times (Londons)
- Rania Moualla, ZADK Saudi Culinary Arts Academy (Arabia Saudí)
- Adjoa Andoh, actress (Bristol)
- Ahmad Joudeh, dancer and choreographer (Damasco)
- Joaquín Achúcarro, pianist (Bilbao)
- Gerediaga Elkartea, cultural agent (Erandio)
Although more than one of these individuals deserves a post, today I want to focus on the dancer and choreographer Ahmad Joude, from Damascus.
Fair Saturday Award decided to honour this individual in recognition of his artistic and humanitarian achievements. Ahmad was born in 1990 in the Yarmouk Palestinian refugee camp in Syria. At the age of 16, he began his career as a dancer and in 2016, thanks to the Dutch National Ballet, his artistic career began to gain international recognition. His life has not been easy, but:
“ Despite war and threats, he never gave up on dance, which became an act of resistance and hope. Committed to social causes, he takes part in projects on inclusion and children’s rights. In 2021, he published his autobiography Dance or Die and in 2024 he was recognized as a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum. His life affirms dance as a tool of freedom and hope.”
These days I have been reading about him and watching and listening to videos and interviews. Learning about what he has been through, knowing that he suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder, that he has a past he cannot shake off, but that, despite everything, he has been able to rebuild his life and do what he does for himself and for many people who have been in his situation, is worthy of recognition, gratitude and applause.
The other day, I read the following passage:
“Witnessing a child killed in a battle, Ahmad Joudeh decided to work for children orphaned in the war. He joined fundraising activities for SOS Children’s Village Syria and held dance lessons for the children of their villages, Ahmad has a lot of joy and a big talent in teaching children especially children with difficult situations such as refugees and down syndrome children, through his dance workshops he makes the children build a stronger self esteem and create a deeper bond between them.”
Meeting Ahmad in person, having him in front of me, talking to him and, even with everything he has been through and carries inside (his past and its consequences), seeing how grateful he is, leads me to consider him a role model. Because each of us can do more than we think, because life is meant to be lived, because it is possible to be an entrepreneur in different fields, because if Ahmad can do it, perhaps we should think about what is stopping many of us from doing so. For that and much more, Ahmad deserves a place on this blog.
Thank you, Ahmad, for what you do.
We Love Reading (English version)
The Fair Saturday awards were created in Bilbao in 2017. Their objective is clear: ‘to recognise, at an international level, the initiatives of inspiring individuals and organisations that have demonstrated their ability to generate social impact through art and culture… to promote new models of action with the mission of generating more inclusive, fair and sustainable growth’.
In 2022, I attended the presentation of these very special awards, and I had the opportunity to meet one of the winners first-hand: Rana Dajani, founder of We Love Reading. (more…)