Purpose: The work proposal IDENTIFÍCATE is part of the European project NET-IDEA Project (Network of European Towns for Interculturalism, Diversity, Equality and Anti-discrimination) and aims to develop initiatives using artistic methodologies. It seeks to raise public awareness and encourage critical analysis among key groups regarding opportunities that can benefit the diverse youth of our city. To this end, a participatory process was started for the creation of spaces for interaction between young people from different socio-cultural backgrounds and contexts. These spaces for participation included artistic creation workshops on methodologies such as illustration, comics, collage and photovoice, that allowed young participants to reflect and discuss about youth participation, the concept of identity or the feeling of belonging.
Stimulus/Rationale: This action was part of the NET-IDEA Project in which 11 cities from 5 countries participated: Italy, Portugal, Sweden, Germany and Poland (all of them members of the Intercultural Cities Programme). In the case of Spain, Barcelona, Bilbao, Castelló de la Plana, Donostia and Tenerife were the RECI territories that took part in the project.
Process: In the case of our city, the proposal is based on two simultaneous lines of intervention. The first phase focused on the creation of a technical committee that incorporated the different municipal areas that work with youth (Youth, Citizen Participation, Community Dynamisation and the Diversity and Hate Crimes Unit of the local police), plus institutions that are linked in some way to youth (associations, NGOs, formal and non-formal education spaces, participation bodies, self-managed spaces, etc.).
The aim of this intervention was to foster municipal and intra-municipal transversality, so that the outcomes of this process would represent the different realities existing at the youth level in our city. The identification and contact of entities were carried out through collaborative mapping, which enabled the detection of emerging spaces for youth participation that had previously gone unnoticed by the city council and/or organisations, as they were not directly connected to any entity. This mapping process highlighted the need to assess youth participation opportunities and spaces for interaction in our municipality, as many resources designed specifically for young people remain underutilised.
This mapping process resulted in the incorporation of young people from very diverse socio-cultural contexts that enriched the spaces for interaction proposed in the artistic creation phase.
The second phase focused on offering different artistic spaces for participation, investigation and self-expression. These workshops were open to the general young population, irrespective of their links to any youth organization or movement. This favoured the incorporation of young people from very diverse socio-economic contexts and less usual in the processes of youth participation, interested in addressing issues related to intercultural coexistence from a creative perspective. Likewise, it was relevant that this interaction spaces were not linked to the organisations, whose role was mainly the dissemination of the activity.
Artistic methodologies as a tool for working with young people are very effective, as they allow them to experiment and explore very personal situations with different degrees of exposure, in some cases discovering artistic creation skills, in others identifying their own perceptions or narrative abilities, and in others highlighting personal experiences or life stories, any of which are necessary for the final contribution.
This second part of the action is composed of three complementary artistic interventions: 3 workshops and 1 exhibition through the “photovoice” methodology, 2 workshops of 4 sessions on comic and illustration and a large format photographic exhibition: “Be Everything Belong”.
- 3 Photovoice workshops were organised in which the participants worked through photography to identify spaces of belonging in the city and how these may facilitate the process of inclusion or exclusion. These workshops served to enrich the diagnostic study carried out on the first phase of the action and were fundamental to develop a document to be delivered to the political decision-makers stating the perceptions of young people regarding the existing spaces for youth participation an interaction in the city.
- Comic workshops: two workshops of 4 sessions each were implemented, in which 207 young people participated. These workshops were designed in 4 sequential sessions in which the following concepts were worked on:
Interculturality and Comics: approaching the intercultural concepts by analysing and contextualising how it has been addressed from the visual language and the narratives used. This was done through the search for references, which allowed for the enrichment of the understanding and representation of elements such as equality, the value of cultural diversity and interaction. Through these sessions, the focus was placed on the need to seek out comics by authors from culturally diverse backgrounds who offer unique perspectives on their cultural or migratory visions and experiences. By collecting and analysing these references, a richer and more nuanced view of the representation of diversity in comics was obtained, thus encouraging reflection and dialogue around these issues, but also broadening young people's reading options.
- Identity and narrative: character and story creation workshop. Joseph Campbell's ‘Hero's Journey’ framework was used to create the story. This narrative model describes a common pattern in many stories across cultures that can be summarised as follows: a hero leaves the ordinary world to confront an adversary and returns home profoundly renewed as a person.
- Creative graphics in comics: a workshop for experimenting with different plastic techniques. Creative graphics in comics is essential to convey stories and emotions effectively. Different artistic techniques were explored: engraving, collage, typography, drawing, use of colours, etc.
- Creation of the comic: a workshop to create the final product in a collaborative way.
Large format photographic exhibition “Be everything Belong”: the action included a final step in line with other cities of the NET-IDEA project added to the global participatory art proposal called INSIDEOUT, through which the French artist JR allows everyone to share their stories through black and white photographs printed in large format. This action has a worldwide impact.
The whole process resulted in three awareness-raising products on the reality of cultural diversity among young people in our city. These actions had a great impact by highlighting the prominence of the young participants of the workshops, who shared their image, their life stories, and their personal experiences to generate a social narrative that underlines realities that sometimes remain invisible.
The products are:
- Photovoice workshops-advocacy action
- Artistic creation workshops in non-formal education spaces ‘Comic Workshops’.
- Photographic exhibition on the sense of belonging and identity ‘BE EVERYTHING BELONG”’: carried out during the month of March 2024 on the façade of the city's central market, at the historic centre of the city.
Impact: For the city, there was a great social impact, having an exhibition where the young people of our city could show first-hand their stories, their experiences and their realities through their own image and work and setting themselves up as referents of a social change of which they are part. The following elements have led to new ways of working in favour of intercultural coexistence in our city:
- Creation of a sustainable participation space of intra-municipal technical involvement and with the youth associations from which to generate proposals aimed at this population group.
- Creation of a youth space for social change. Incorporation of young referents in the youth participation groups for the designing of specific actions of incidence.
- Incorporation of artistic methodologies to work on the intercultural framework with young people in non-formal education.
- Creation of political advocacy actions as a result of the processes generated.
- Participation in impact actions and transfer of good practices at European level, as well as raising awareness with the exhibition ‘Be Everything Belong’ exhibition in Botkyrka and in Castelló, with the support of the INSIDEOUT project of the JR Foundation.
- Creation of a knowledge transfer product for other RECI and ICC cities, on the construction of visual and written narratives, with examples and methodologies of working with young people.
Key reference documents:
