ASTRA aims to engineer an upskilling educational model tailored towards a multiple and trans-generational target of: BENEFICIARIES 1. young adults (18-29 year olds), whose active participation to the labour market has always been strategic to the upkeeping of local, regional, national and continental economic livelihood, and that is increasingly more so, in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis and of the on-going 2020 Covid-related crisis. 2. the model will be directed to those mature adults (30-65 year olds) willing to reposition themselves more competitively within the working arena in individual, sector and geographic terms. 3. seniors (aged 65 and over) will be co-opted to maximise the impact of what effectively aspires to throw the seeds of a grassroots conversion and revitalisation. LOCATIONS The process aims to unleash the untapped high cultural and natural potentials in a sample of brown-field communities lying in the extreme NUT2 outskirt regions of the EU's Southern and Eastern peripheries: Sicily (Italy), Andalusia (Spain), Silesia (Poland). DETERMINANTS 1. CULTURAL: A) The dominant cluster-and-dissolve model purpoted by the World Bank that has gone unchallenged until the late 1990s has led to massive out-migration of human resources from former mining areas to service-industry urban conglomerations, regardless of any compensative measure being taken at the point of origin of the migratory flows; B) Systematic lack of government and private support in little-funded, demographically declining communities has made economic transition hard to design – let alone implement – in industrial, economic, cultural as well educational terms. 2. EDUCATIONAL: A) A mismatch between the predominantly technical secondary education on offer locally and their former quasi-exclusive employment destination emerged as soon as the mining and extractive activities were disbanded. This decades-long unresolved gap has led the educational-working demand-offer supply chain to short-circuit and, consequently, echoes in: B) spiralling early school drop out rates and fewer graduates, as a consequence of a wide-spread negative sentiment across the young and mature adults age segments (15-64 year olds) and at all geographical scales, to the point that the region the proponent organisation belongs to (formerly home to as much as 92% of global production) performs significantly lower than the EU average in terms of rate of graduates/total population at NUT0, NUT1, NUT2 levels (EU average 39.9%; Italy 26.9%; Sicily 17.8%). 3. ECONOMIC: A third of young adult jobs were lost across Mediterranean European economies (Spain, Italy, Greece) after the 2007-8 crisis and prior to 2020 Covid-19 crisis striking. While NUTS3 sub-regional unemployment figures have yet to be released by national institutes of statistics and Eurostat, in all likelihood the above contractions of the workforce will add to those caused by unmitigated closures in post-mining communities. That is why, in order to preserve the well-being of brown-field areas, a revitalisation/conversive approach – starting from adult education actions – is essentially and undelayable. COSTS 1. ECONOMIC: if unmitigated, NEET figures will add to negative demographics, low natality, emigration, long life expectancy in making ever more inactive citizens throw a greater burden on an ever smaller share of actives. Up to 1 in 5 peak-age workers will be lost by 2030 and dependency will rise from 38% to 70% by 2050 (Istat 2019). 2. SOCIETAL: Inactivity leads to decaying well-being and keeps youths from reaching adulthood markers. Mediterranean NEETs are aware of these costs and are also more afraid of getting to 45 without a job (25.5% of Italian, 10.7% of German youth). Despair leads to apathy which leads to sheltering in gaming and social networking putting them at risk of digital, alcohol or substance addiction/abuse. SOLUTIONS 1. Harness the speed of development, where advanced Knowledge Intensive Systems (digital) and non-cognitive skills (creativity and entrepreneurship) demand adaptation by all age groups via upward skilling routes; 2. Capsize labour policies from apprenticeships to start-up mentoring; 3. Foster community resilience by transitioning from one-industry-driven local economic systems to diversified ones, cuch as the one underlying the tourism sector and relates services; 4. Base the entire conversion cycle upon economic and environmental sustainability . SELECT REFERENCES Conlin M V et al (2011) What Happens When Mining Leaves. A Global Synthesis, London; Mendes I (2013) Mining Rehabilitation Planning, Mining Heritage Tourism, Benefits and Contingent Valuation, SOCIUS Working Papers, Issue 3, Lisbon; Simpson A (2019) Former Coal Mining TownsTurn to Tourism, Pew Charitable Trusts; Philadelphia D'Urso G – Modica (2019) Resilience and Sectoral Composition Change of Italian Inner Areas in Response to the Great Recession, Sustainability 11, 2679-2693
ASTRA's primary objective was to produce a kit of documentary, multimedia and audiovisual resources, focused on the promotion and material and immaterial revitalization of post-mining sites present in the peripheral and rural areas in which all partner organizations operate on a daily basis. The original aim, maintained during the course of the action, was to allow the transfer of know-how, skills and creative attitudes from post-industrial contexts which have effectively completed a process of rebirth, through cultural and social entrepreneurship and the use of arts and creativity, to contexts that still today appear as "ruins" of a mining and extractive past. In this way, the project’s activities suggested new forms of cultural practice, sustainable tourism, territorial and social enhancement, relying above all on growth opportunities offered by a kind of cultural heritage that is hardly part of our "artistic imagination". A further objective was the digitalisation of part of the European mining heritage, through the creation of an innovative Geodatabase.
The aim of ASTRA is to encourage processes of cultural and creative revitalization by acting on specific environments and territories: rural contexts marked by a former mining and post-industrial past, particularly in territories such as Sicily (Italy), Andalusia (Spain) and Silesia (Poland). The objective is to disseminate resources, knowledge and awareness tools among a wide spectrum of stakeholders, especially public bodies and policy makers, offering them good practices for the recovery of the broader former mining sectors through the use of arts, culture and creativity, but also for the protection local, rural cultural and landscape heritage. The main purpose of ASTRA is to produce and abilitate a strong exchange of both creative and policy practices, from the most virtuous post-industrial revitalization contexts (Silesia, Poland) to the contexts which are still, even today, dramatically deprived, especially those of Southern Italy.