BACKGROUND Cultural practice makes people reflexive and participatory, thereby developing individual and social capacities. This is identified in the literature as the intrinsic value of culture. When cultural practices translate into other fields such as health and education, they have other social and economic effects, such as preventing dropouts in education, improving health, making people more resilient, growth that is more inclusive, etc. These effects are instrumental values of culture [OECD (2018), Culture and Local Development]. Capitalizing on the intrinsic and the instrumental values of culture, now needed more than ever due to the Covid-19 pandemic and as a response to its economic and social impacts, in ENACTING, we present a method for civic engagement that uses video documentary to capture discourses within focused local settings and translocate them to online spaces. Our method aims to facilitate creativity, innovation, and active citizenship, as well as the exchange of perspectives between communities across these spaces. OBJECTIVES Our overarching objective is to promote common values, inclusion, civic engagement and participation through skills development in the arts and innovative digital practices. Therefore, the project aims to: - identify social challenges in local contexts, and provide a concrete methodology for doing so - promote skills development in the artistic digital practice of developing a social documentary by providing a web-based training on social documentary development (ENACTING MOOC). The course will enable learners to rethink local challenges in a creative way, and to put forward potential solutions to those, thus contributing to their community. - empower awareness, active citizenship, participation, social inclusion and foster innovative, intercommunity, intercultural dialogue, through the ENACTING Participatory Media Lab. - promote audience development and the use of digital means to create and disseminate cultural products, through the Participatory Media Lab, contributing to the recovery resilience of the CCS. TARGET GROUPS The ENACTING MOOC and Participatory Media Lab will empower citizens in the focused local communities. They are ultimately targeted to all adults – youth and youth workers, elderly, trainers and educators, artists, migrants and refugees, disadvantaged groups, and all other interested persons. Also, the project targets local authorities, policy makers, grassroots and community organisations, youth clubs/centres, adult education institutions, local CCS, NGOs, social cooperatives and HEIs in arts and digital media education. RESULTS IO1: Identification of local challenges in urban settings. The major aim of the Local Challenges Assessment is to gain a comprehensive understanding of the present particularities, characteristics and social challenges in local urban settings. Besides Local Challenges Assessment, the IO will provide a concrete methodology for the identification of local challenges, that can be transferred and re-used in other contexts. IO2: ENACTING Social Documentary Film Training Course A comprehensive training course comprising a suite of modules and resources- that will support interested adult learners of all backgrounds as well as partners’ teaching and administrative staff to develop their skills in producing social documentary films by capitalizing on the ubiquity of new on-line learning environments and the pervasiveness of mobile devices and open source software. IO3: ENACTING MOOC - a Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) and a freely accessible Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) containing the training material developed. It also contains a Virtual Community space to support community interactions among learners, professors, and teaching assistants. IO4: ENACTING Participatory Media Lab - a collective virtual place that allows both to give visibility to the productions made by the participants from the different countries and to represent a space for dialogue and exchange. IMPACT - Learners’ acquisition of new skills on Social Documentary development, thus increased capacity of adults in social documentary/artistic production and digital skills - Enhanced awareness of adults on social issues, active citizenship and community engagement, social inclusion, promotion of common values, local innovation through creativity -Increased awareness of society regarding current challenges and increased capacity to suggest solutions and responses. - Increased resilience of cities and communities by engaging citizens in civic and collective actions. - Community development and intercommunity dialogue and exchange: increase social inclusion and cohesion between different groups in the society - Enhanced audience development and use of digital means to create and disseminate cultural products, thus contributing to the recovery resilience of the cultural and creative sectors
Our overarching objective was to promote common values, inclusion, civic engagement and participation through skills development in the arts and innovative digital practices. The project aimed to identify social challenges in local contexts, and thus, provide a concrete methodology; promote skills development in the artistic digital practice of developing a social documentary by providing a web-based training on social documentary development. The online course aimed to enable learners to rethink local challenges in a creative way, and to put forward potential solutions to those, thus contributing to their community; empower awareness, active citizenship, participation, social inclusion and foster intercultural dialogue, through the Participatory Media Lab; promote audience development and the use of digital means to create and disseminate cultural products, through the Participatory Media Lab, contributing to the recovery of the CCS. The ENACTING MOOC and PMPL aimed to empower citizens in the focused local communities. They are ultimately targeted to all adults with focus on disadvantaged groups.
The main aim of our project was to design an innovative online course on social documentary development and a virtual platform that would provide citizens with knowledge, skills and space to produce and share their own documentaries to address social issues in EU cities that share challenges and opportunities: Dresden, Marseille, Florence, Larissa and Athens. All 5 cities are moderate performers in the CCC Monitor, have diversified populations and immigration strains. All have deprived communities experiencing social exclusion. Additionally, Covid-19 created an unprecedented crisis, impacting education and CCS. Research acknowledges that documentaries can have a considerable social impact, as they can challenge dominant narratives, build community relationships, create social change. Documentary films generate empathy, illuminating new perspectives and activating powerful emotions. Coordinated, and strategic actions can facilitate major changes in a society’s viewpoint, values and practices; they can shift this post-viewing inspiration into action, which can drive societal change, truly altering societal practice, thus having deep and lasting social impact.