The Action: The Multi Media Project The Action Celebrates its 4th Birthday

Tommorow, on 10^th December, it will be just 4 years ago when the multi media project The Action has been introduced in the Czech Republic. The Road Safety Department of the Czech Ministry of Transport (BESIP) and the EuroNet.CZ Agency were behind its birth. When introduced no one thought that in Strasnice Theatre has started the history of the project which will become one of the most successful projects aimed on road safety in the Czech Republic and really no one had in his mind thoughts about introduction The Action Project abroad.

“We started to build the project about unneeded road traffic accidents we thouht that could grip teenagers” said Ms Zuzana Ambrozova, Head of the Road Safety Department (BESIP) of the Czech Ministry of Transport. “Even in our dreams we did not think that we will have 90 thousand visitors and more than 200 reruns” she added.

225^th anniversary rerun and other two performances, last ones this year, will be held in the Social Hall of the Prague Congress Centre on Monday, 15^th December 2008.

The Action Project brings to students of secondary schools – young and novice drivers – emotional experience of real impact of road traffic accident. No talks about crashed vehicles or about material damages. We speak openly about disability and very often about death of young people who overestimated their capability or they behave curiously irresponsibly. There is no indoctrinate because it has no effect on this category of road users. The Action is not a classical preventive presentation. It is not boring speech of a policeman on the stage. In fact The Action is a performance. It is a performance written by life itself. And by death, unfortunately as well. The performance or collage respectively consisting of modern disco music, video clips with dynamic cut, expessive dance and mainly of real stories presented by those who lived them through.

“There is no smile on faces of people leaving our performace. This is not our aim. We do not want to entertrain people, we want to bring to young people hard reality of serious road traffic accident and its possible consequences” says Mr Martin Gebauer, director of the EuroNet.CZ Agency, which produces The Action. “The Action should aware young people that aggressive way of driving, very often combined with alcohol could change into long term stay on a hospital bed” he added.

The most amazing part of the four year history of the project is that those who are the target group of The Action Project take it very positively. As the survey executed in November this year by the STEM Agency shows, students with one voice took positively both the form and content of this project. The average mark given to it is 1,5 (equivalent to A -). Almost all asked students said that thanks to The Action they are aware of danger of road traffic accidents and of consequences of irresponsible behaviour of drivers. Three of four respondents think that The Action will have permanent impact on their behaviour as road users.

“We expected positive results of the December survey, but we do not expect that the project will have impact on 1/3 of young drivers. It was suprise in positive way for us” says Ms Zuzana Ambrozova. “We were suprised and it is surely binding for us” adds Mr Gebauer and he continues : “Our common work has a sense and it warms the heart.”

The multi media show The Action saw from its beginning in 2004 during 224 reruns almost 90 thousand visitors in 78 towns, mostly secondary school students and students of the 9^th grade of elementary schools. In November 2008 The Action Project has been succesfully introduced in Slovakia by 12 reruns with 7 500 visitors. The Action Project is tailored for pupils and students of both mentioned countries  and it is a free of charge school performance. We plan 87 reruns in 29 towns in the Czech Republic and 24 reruns in 8 towns in Slovakia in 2009.

It is impossible to compare The Action of 2004 with The Action of 2008. Starting this spring we use a unique projection on three screens. Before autumn tour this year the project has been richen by new video clips which do not only introduce some of the entertrainments but they especially create a situation that the performance is more compact and more emotional. More and more reruns forced the producers to enlarge  the alternating cast. The cast are real members of the Integrated Rescue System, whose normal job very often limits their posibility to fulfill all terms of performances. So nowadays the director has a possibility to choose from three alernations for every role.

Basic Information About The Action Project
The author of the project is the Dutch company ITC. In the Czech Republic it is realised by the EuroNet.CZ Agency in co-operation with the Road safety Department of the Czech Ministry of Transport (BESIP) which is the general partner of the project. The EuroNet.CZ Agency is a holder of the exclusive licence for the Czech Republic and for 11 new EU member states up to 2015. The Action – BESIP Tour 2008 has been done under the patronage of the Czech Minister of Transport Mr Ales Rebicek.

Contacts

For more information visit The Action web site on www.theaction.eu