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In this Transnational Cooperation (TNC) project youngsters from the territories of 6 Local Action Groups (LAG) discover local traditions and legends, and innovate their cultural and rural identity of today through story telling and movie production.

Sulcis Iglesiente Capoterra e Campidano di Cagliari (Teulada, Italy)

Recognizing the importance of the countryside’s young citizens the LAGs, which have come together in this TNC project, want to encourage their regions’ youth to participate in rural development and more specifically in initiatives supported by the LEADER approach. “Our rural areas are growing from and with the youth - we strongly depend on them”, says Sofia Nikka from the Kolari municipality in Finland. The shared idea is that promoting the creativity of the local youth can generate added value, as it produces positive publicity for their native land, which is subject to strong depopulation.

The overall objective is to strengthen the youth’s link with the rural area in which they are growing up. More specifically, the project aims to help the youth to build a rural society based on the features of modern life, while preserving and promoting local culture and traditions. Among the wider objectives are: i) the establishment of a positive attitude towards engagement in rural business activities and traditional crafts; ii) the promotion of contact and opportunity for exchange of knowledge between older and younger people; and iii) the creation of a lasting common interactive learning platform between the partner areas, to exchange ideas, stories, traditions and experience.

At the outset, all partner LAGs invited the youth to a writing competition linking local traditions and legends with their areas’ cultural and rural identity of today. The Italian lead partner published the winning stories in a book, and partner LAGs will in the following organize 3 workshop campuses in their regions, during which professionals support the youth with the production of 12 short films, which will be based on these stories. Social media ensures publicity among the local population.

Making use of the media most commonly employed by young people, i.e. the internet, social networks and cinema, the project enables the youth to experience culture and lifestyles in a new way, to identify similarities and differences between the participating territories, to adapt to changing environments, thus promoting social skills development, open-mindedness, and broadened perspectives. While the youngsters take new interest and gain technical skills such as movie making and photo shooting, the collection of traditional stories and legends in a book and their transformation into short movies also contributes to the strengthening of the cultural identity of the participating territories.

“You need to be a fluent English speaker or employ interprets. I also think that smaller groups of young people encourage exchange and communication”, says the representative of the French LAG Pays de Puisaye-Forterre. “The strongest element of our project were our young people, who are curious, always have a positive attitude and are ready to experience a new initiative” says the Italian lead partner, and concludes: “TNC enabled our youth to work together and generated new, close friendships”.

The last project campus will be held in Sardinia in May 2014 and will see the “World Premiere” of 12 short films, which will show how rural youth interprets its culture and identity. The movies will be published on DVD, together with a documentary about the different project campuses. Ongoing communication, exchange of knowledge and joint planning of future projects already provide evidence of the deepened relationship between the LAG partners.

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https://www.facebook.com/pages/Giovani-e-Sviluppo-Rurale-Youth-and-Rural- Development/13040417045820

D. Piras

d.piras@galsulcisiglesiente.it

+39 781 697025

English, Italian