CultureYouthLab: Youth Activation and Emancipation through Creative Processes ”is a project that seeks to take advantage of the interdisciplinary experience (Art-Education-Citizenship) of the participating organizations to build an innovative methodological model that serves to improve the system. Non-formal education associations from Spain, Portugal, Slovenia, Slovakia and Germany, and associated cultural and training entities in each country are part of the project. We consider that the areas of formal education, non-formal education, culture, social services and public health should be connected in another way to make better use of resources and to be more efficient in their strategies and in their tactics. We believe that incorporating artists and creators and cultural programs into socio-educational and training processes in a systematic and consistent way improves learning and promotes social inclusion. In addition, there is great opportunity for employment and innovation in this approach. Thus, the project will collect existing initiatives, and will agree on a methodological model that will then be tested in each participating territory and evaluated. In parallel, we will organize training events for trainers and for young educators and artists so that later in their countries they can multiply the processes. Later, we will create several products that will serve to inspire, guide and train youth actors in the development of socio-educational projects that incorporate artistic and cultural processes. And finally, we will present the results of the project in different informative actions that will promote above all the increase of formal and informal networks, of interdisciplinary connections. "CultureYouthLab: Youth Activation and Emancipation through Creative Processes" will serve to improve socio-educational programs and to strengthen the cultural arts sector. This pandemic crisis requires us to accelerate some innovations already underway and can help us better reconnect services for youth and build more effective methodologies. Art and culture can be an axis that improves treatments, that helps us in social incorporation, that increases learning process, that reinforces employability and citizenship.
Our goal: incorporate artists and creators and cultural programs into socio-educational processes can improve learning and promotes social inclusion. We have collected existing initiatives and collectively designed a model that was fully evaluated by each participating country. We wanted to organise training events for trainers and for young educators and artists so that later in their respective countries they could replicate those processes. We wanted to create several products that will serve to inspire, guide and train youth actors in the development of socio-educational projects that incorporate artistic and cultural processes. And finally, we wanted to present the results of our work in written guides and disseminate them in a multiplier event to help strengthen formal and informal culural-artistic-education networks. The project served to improve socio-educational programs and to strengthen the cultural arts sector. This pandemic showed us that we must adapt to innovations in technology to help us better provide services for youth. Art and culture are cross-cutting elements of this project. These elements helped us to be more socially inclusive, improve learning, employability and promote good citizenship.
The project was submitted in response to the Erasmus+ Covid19 call, motivated by the European Commission's concern about the lack of artistic and cultural activities as a result of the pandemic. Asociación Navarra Nuevo Futuro has been experimenting and promoting methodologies that seek to link artistic creation with socio-educational activities for over a decade and has been exchanging similar practices with their #CultureYouthLab partners. This project forms part of a longer process, and represents an opportunity to showcase, systematise and deepen the relationship between cultural and education. In addition, we have focused on the use of artistic creation as a catalyst for youth activation and emancipation and on creating cultural objects to accompany young people on their life journeys. Cultural expression has traditionally formed a central part of schooling and non-formal education. However the relationship between education and art was severed: this allowed for greater sophistication and specialisation in both areas, however this came at the cost of art and culture not being integrated into the education system as a cross-cutting tool. That is why we now need to be reminded of the importance of art and creation in learning.