This project proposal is associating spanish, italian and portuguese organizations working in the empowing and/or training youth from peripheral and rural areas. Those organisations are convinced that Youth, rural territories and creativity are key elements to face the different challenges that we are currently facing: COVID 19 crisis, but also the climate change emergency. During these last months we have witnessed how the health crisis and its set of restrictions (such as lockdown, social distancing, limits in meetings ...) are destroying the already rare and fragile spaces available for youth in rural areas. Through this project we intend to exchange ideas and experiences and to join forces in order to support Youth from rural areas in the creation of new local ecosystems for participation, collaboration and creativity to express themselves, connect, collaborate and formulate proposals and projects for the future of their territories, promoting new paradigms that seem more than needed nowaday. The project partners will carry out this task following the steps, experienced and results ( methods for facilitation, digital platform ...) of the "#PeripheralEncounters for Arts, Culture and Youth" pilot initiative that has been developed in the Alto Palancia county (Castellón / Spain) from September 2019 to July 2020. During the 16 months of the project, the partners will then structure their exchanges and intervention in the territory according to the following steps: - step 0: identifying local agents, creating local steering committees involving young people and local artists; - step 1: breaking the isolation of young people living in rural areas and encouraging their participation in creative and cultural actions linked to the life of their territories, - step 2: promoting collaboration in rural territories and fostering networking initiative both locally and globally, - step 3: creating and promoting new narratives about the past, present and future of rural territories; - step 4:evaluation of impacts To accompany this process, the following activities will be organized: - 2 transnational project meetings (at the beginning and end of the project) - 3 international #PeripheralYouthMakers training courses to prepare steering comittees to lead steps 1, 2 and 3 of the project and to foster exchanges of experiences; - a minimum of 9 #PeripheralEncounters in each of the territories involved in the project: Alto Palancia region (Castellón / Spain), Aragon region, Peneda Gerês National Park in Portugal and Apennine Mountains National Park in the north of Italy. - an awareness campaign on “being young in rural settings” in collaboration with local festivals ; During all the activities and encounters, these open spaces form meeting and collaborate will be facilitated with dynamics based non-formal education principle, always focusing on group processes rather than short-term results. The project partners will also carry out mediation tasks with key public and private institutions in order to consolidate these spaces and to foster sustainability to the initiatives (individual or collective) incubated during those encounters at local or european levels.
The #PeripheralYouthMakers has aimed to: 1. Break the isolation of young people living in rural areas and encourage their participation in actions related to the life of their territories. 2. Encourage collaboration among them as well as support network actions. 3. Encourage creativity and facilitate the emergence of new narratives about the past, present and future of rural territories. During the 16 months of the project, the partners have structured their intervention in the territory according to the following phases: - Phase 0: identify local actors, create local piloting committees involving young people living in rural areas and local artists to jointly design community development strategies. - Phase 1: break the isolation of young people living in rural areas and encourage their participation in creative and cultural actions linked to the life of their territories. - Phase 2: to foster collaboration among them and network actions both locally and globally. - Phase 3: fostering new narratives about the past, present and future of their rural territories. - Phase 4: evaluation of the process and impacts.
The proposal developed has associated Spanish, Italian and Portuguese organizations, all of them involved in the empowerment and/or training of youth acting from peripheral areas. Organizations convinced that youth, rural territories and creativity are key to respond to the different challenges that must be faced today, such as the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic or the latent climate emergency. During long months in which the effects of COVID-19 were present and occupied all the media headlines, we witnessed how the health crisis and the set of restrictions (confinement, social distancing, limits in meetings...) affected and destroyed the already fragile spaces of coexistence available to the youth of rural areas. For this reason, the #PeripheralYouthMakers was born from the need to provide those meeting spaces where young people could be the active protagonists of the changes they want for their territories.