ERASMUS Projects

CULTURAD - Enhancing European CULTural and creative practices to empower civic engagement and address the risk of RADicalisation among youth

Specific Programme: KA220-YOU - Cooperation partnerships in youth

Research team:

Coordinator:

  • UNIVERSIDAD DEL PAIS VASCO/ EUSKAL HERRIKO UNIBERTSITATEA (Spain)

Partners:

  • RESEARCH AND EDUCATION OF SOCIAL EMPOWERMENT AND TRANSFORMATION-RESET LTD (Cyprus)
  • Rinova Málaga Sociedad Limitada Unipersonal (Spain)
  • SYMPLEXIS (Greece)
  • CENTRO INTERCULTURALE ARTISTICO SICILIANO- LA GUILLA (Italy)
  • Visual Voices (Cyprus)

Total budget: 250.000€ (UPV/EHU: 53.000,00 €)
Total funded: 250.000€ (UPV/EHU: 53.000,00 €)250.000€ (UPV/EHU: 53.000,00 €)

Start date: 01/11/2022
End date: 31/10/2024
Total duration: 24 months

Brief description: The Fundamental Rights survey (2020) signal a lack of political participation among young people which is concerning given that youth civic engagement is vital for a pluralistic, democratic and resilient society. The impact of low youth civic engagement is reflected in the rise of marginalisation and radicalisation across the EU (Golubeva, 2018; Kitanova, 2020), increasing polarised discourses and racist dogmas (Tallapessy, 2019). In addition, COVID-19 has resulted in terrorist groups further polluting the EU social climate with violent ideologies causing even further disengagement and polarisation (Europol, 2021).

It is time for EU Member states to address radicalisation by promoting civic engagement and exploring new ways of involving marginalised young people across Europe (FRA, 2020). In parallel, it is also vital to address the scarcity of quality youth work on youth participation and civic engagement (UNICEF,2020). Additionally, the EU Youth Strategy 2019-2027 and the European Youth Work Convention paper (2020) stress the need to strengthen cross-sectoral co-operation between youth work organisations and other areas (i.e.Culture), as well support the ability of youth work to tackle emerging challenges and innovate its practices.The cultural dimension of social inclusion and the potential of cultural participation to tackle exclusion has been particularly referred by the European Commission (2013, 2017a, 2018).

Ample research across the EU shows that cultural and artistic practices (i.e. theatre, music, performing arts, literature, and any activities related to promoting cultural heritage) have been shown to strengthen community resilience (Salyk-Virk, 2020), increase intercultural tolerance (Moody,2017), empower civic engagement (Pipparelli, 2021), promote cultural pluralism, inclusion and diversity (Graeme, 2019) as well as help prevent radicalization (Weine & Ahmed, 2012; OSCE, 2019).

Enter CULTURAD, a project with a three-tier approach that (a) promotes cross sectoral and cross-border collaborations between youth practitioners and professionals working in the cultural and creative sector (CCS), (b) develops engagement, participation, and inclusion among marginalised young people using European arts and cultural practices, and (c) implements a participatory action research methodology to democratize the co-creation of new knowledge related to civic engagement and prevention of radicalisation by grounding it in the needs of youth professionals and marginalised Young people, as well as by actively involving them in design of project’s activities. Through the development of a user-informed training package, an interactive platform, as well as virtual multistakeholder transnational roundtables, CULTURAD Will centralise the role of European arts and culture for the development of a more cohesive and less polarised young EU generation.