My European History was one of the projects during season 4 – Autumn storms, in Bodø’s application to become European Capital of Culture. The project was conceived as a library project for and about children/youth in the ten regional centres in Nordland, and their European stories. The idea behind the project was that even though our recent history is full of European influence, it is not necessarily something we reflect on on a daily basis. In a large region like Nordland, the European influence varies from city to city. Through this project, we want children from the lower secondary level in Nordland’s ten regional centres to become more aware of both their own and local European history, and the European dimension. The main goal of the project was that these young people would have the opportunity to share their European history, exchange experiences and stories related to the European dimension with young people of the same age in European twinning towns and in other European Capitals of Culture. All ten cities in Nordland have one or more twin cities in Europe. We wanted these to be involved in the project, and for young people from these cities to tell their European story and exchange stories with young people from their twin cities in Nordland. We wanted to primarily reach young people in the cooperating cities through digital platforms and by creating a teaching package of the educational program in the project that teachers in these classes could implement with their students. This teaching package would also be made available to libraries in Nordland that might want to use it locally. The plan was to contact the municipalities well before the start of school with information on how classes interested in participating could register their interest. The young people in the relevant cities in Nordland would be visited by us in collaboration with Den kulturellter skolesekken i Nordland. The original plan was that we, in collaboration with DKS Nordland, would select one school class in each city to participate in the project. Historians at Nord University would contribute examples of European history and influence for Nordland in general, and for each city in the project. We also envisioned the local public libraries as important sources of local knowledge and history. We wanted to develop an educational program where young people were presented with the following task: tell your own, personal European story. They would tell the story through text, photo, film, digital art, or another medium of their choice. This material would then be shared with the cooperating school class(es) in twinned cities or cultural capitals in Europe. We entered into partnership and collaboration with the European Parliament's MYHEH (My House of European History) project. We envisioned that selected stories produced by students in Nordland and in the cooperating cities in Europe would be uploaded to this platform under the profile of Bodø2024. This is a platform that translates the stories uploaded there into several European languages, meaning that they will be available to even more people. The added value of this partnership was that we were able to connect all these young people to the rest of Europe by making their stories available to more people, and preserving them for posterity. We wanted to put together an editorial team consisting primarily of young people who would select which stories would be published on the various platforms associated with the project. Bodø 2024's presence on the MYHEH platform would also, after the project has ended, help to highlight how widely Bodø 2024 and this project reached out. That we reached out and created connections between young people, not only in Nordland, but all over Europe. In the application that formed the basis for the award of the status as Capital of Culture for 2024, in 2019, the plan was for this project to run over several years leading up to the Capital of Culture year in 2024. However, the pandemic that led to shutdowns in 2020 and 2021 meant that the start was greatly delayed, and that the project had to be adjusted accordingly to adapt to the timeframe we had available. The project manager was recruited and started work in June 2022. We then adjusted the project plan, and planned to recruit participants in 2022, and then start working with the young people in 2023, and their participation was to last until 2024. The conclusion of the project was planned as a youth camp in Nordland during 2024: StoryLab Europe. There, we would gather a number of students from each of the participating school classes from Nordland, twinning cities and European Capitals of Culture. In the work on both the content design and the practical implementation of this camp, the plan was for the young people themselves to be involved. This was also the reason why the project sought. and gained support through the Erasmus programme for youth-led projects.