“PoGo – Poetry on the Go” is a strategic partnership that involves five other partner organisations from Denmark, Turkey, Poland, Romania and Germany. The partners came together to contribute at fostering European identity by strengthening amongst young people a feeling of belonging to a shared European culture. The Strategic Partnership is a response to the current alarming tendencies in Europe: Brexit and its rhetoric on migration; and half of young EU citizens (15-24 years old) believing that there is no common European culture. To address their aim, the partners chose to bring classic and contemporary poetry by establish artists and young poets in the young people’s environment and in a format that attracts and engages. In this regard, the partners pinpoint the following objectives: 1. By August 2021, to give 487 young people from the participating countries the opportunity to define European culture and contribute to its enrichment; 2. By December 2021, to develop a mobile application that gives young people access to European culture as defined by their fellows; 3. To foster, by the end of the project, a private-public partnership with at least 60 stakeholders in the partner countries that contributes at promoting a shared European culture. The project will involve 487 young people from the six organisations in this consortium to develop a mobile app, named “PoGo”, that uses augmented reality technology and bring European poetry to young people. The mobile app will include 78 poems from the partner countries, in their national language. The poems will be collected by the partners under four categories: “Classic or Forgotten”, “Contemporary Poetry”, “Poetry by Young People” and “Collaborative Poetry”. Young people from the partner countries will be video recorded reciting the selected national poems in the original language, thus the 78 creations will be available in video format and will incorporate poetry in English, Danish, Turkish, Romanian, Polish and German. The partners agreed on various measures to ensure the use of the app, such as agreements with local stakeholders who will create visibility for the app at their premises, agreements with associate partners, multiplier events and extensive dissemination activities, availability of the app on Android and iOS platforms. Although being targeted to the young people by its functionalities, the app has a transferable character and it can be used in the school and VET sectors as well as by adult learners. The project is partners’ small contribution to enhance European identity and a feeling of belonging to share European culture. The project is in line with the CONNECT area as stipulated in EU Youth Strategy 2019-2027 that aims to bring young people together across the EU and beyond to foster solidarity and intercultural understanding. The project relates to the New Agenda for Culture as it looks to reinforce a sense of common European identity. Nonetheless, the project develops innovative approaches for reaching young people and addressing linguistic and culture diversity, thus is in line with the objectives of the KA2 of the programme. The partnership brings stakeholders from various sector: four partner organisations from the non-governmental sector (City Arts, Interbildung, ADEPT and Semper Avanti), a social enterprise (InterCollege) and a public institution (Kocaeli Provincial Directorate of National Education). Although, the five partner organisations were involved to different extents in strategic partnership, “PoGo – Poetry on the Go" is the first Strategic Partnership for City Arts.
The project had three objectives as follows: 1. By August 2021, to give 487 young people from the participating countries the opportunity to define European culture and contribute to its enrichment; 2. By December 2021, to develop a mobile application that gives young people access to European culture as defined by their fellows; 3. To foster, by the end of the project, a private-public partnership with at least 60 stakeholders in the partner countries that contributes at promoting a shared European culture. Although the partners could meet the timing aimed at due the Covid-19 pandemic, the partners met all the objectives and considerable exceeded the targets (i.e., ca 2927 young people were involved in developing the app, and 131 agreements were made with the local stakeholders).
A Eurobarometer report from 2017 on Cultural Heritage shows that 54% of the respondents on EU level believed that there was no common European culture as European countries are too different from one another. Worrying is that this opinion gained more supporters since 2007 when similar research was conducted. Even more worrying was that 50% of the young people aged 15-24 shared this believe. With this in mind, the partners identified the need to strengthen European identity amongst young people by giving them access to a shared European culture in an innovative and attractive way. The partners in the project chose to focus on poetry as it was identified that young people’ interest in poetry is on the rise young people driven by their “passion for politics” and need of “making sense of the world”.