Bodø, the first European Capital of Culture within the Arctic Circle, welcomed participants from all over Europe for the AER Summer Academy 2024. Co-organised by Nordland County Council and the Assembly of European Regions (AER), the Summer Academy explored best practices, experiences and examples of how culture can foster youth inclusion and engagement.
Insights from the opening plenary: culture builds bridges within and between communities
Kickstarted by Kari-Anne Bøkestad Andreassen, President of the Summer Academy and County Councillor of Nordland County Council, the opening plenary underscored the power of culture to bring together different people, countries and regions, enable dialogue and value diversity.
Eivind Holst, Mayor of Nordland County, highlighted how cultural diversity is essential for mutual learning between regions as it represents the very material for knowledge transfer. The high commitment of Nordland to youth inclusion in cultural and societal activities was made clear by Linda Helén Haukland, AER Vice President for Employment, Education and Skills and Nordland County Councillor. She stressed the need for coordination and joint action between public and private sectors to ensure inclusion of young people, irrespective of their social background. As further underlined by Kine Olsen, Senior Advisor of FN-sambandet, the United Nations Association of Norway, addressing socio-economic disparities is essential to release the community-building potential of young people, who can create and maintain bridges between people of different backgrounds.
Culture as enabler of positive change in politics and society
Culture as a force for political and social change was the common thread of the panel discussion featuring Tanya Hristova, Chair of the Commission for Social Policy, Education, Employment, Research and Culture, of the European Committee of the Regions (CoR), Anna Ramkovica, Latvian Youth Delegate of the Congress of Local and Regional Authorities (Council of Europe), Nathaniel Holan Larsen, Councillor of the Nordland County Council and alumnus of the Sàmi Pathfinders initiative, Norbert Nagy, President of the Youth Regional Network (YRN), Gianluca Rossino, advisor for DYPALL, and Amanda Jenssen, member of the Youth Advisory Board of Nordland County Council.
Chair Hristova reaffirmed the CoR’s commitment to stand for continued and predictable funding of programmes empowering youth such as Erasmus+. Its core spirit mirrors the commitment of the Council of Europe to open up spaces for youth participation, as demonstrated by the project ‘Rejuvenating Politics’, highlighted by Anna Ramkovica as a blueprint for involving people under 30 in regional and local politics.
Panelists also underlined the role of youth councils in ensuring young people’s access to policy-making. As underlined by Nathaniel Holan Larsen, youth councils in Norway are an effective instrument to youth representation. Their statutes prescribe that their representative can speak in the County government, and two members must be full-time employed by the County. At the same time, the work of Norwegian youth councils is vital to ensure the representation of minorities such the Sàmi, whose cross-border nation stretches between Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russia, and whose heritage can be maintained and respected only with continued support from institutions.
To be impactful, youth councils must be given conditions and resources to contribute to policy-making, as underlined by Gianluca Rossino, advisor for DYPALL Network, lead partner of the Erasmus+ project Climbing the Ladder (CL-YE) and Amanda Jensen, member of the Youth Council of Nordland County Council. Rossino also highlighted that it is essential to change the conditions for youth engagement to make it an essential part of community policy and politics.
Culture fuels political start-ups
The focus then shifted to political power of culture across Europe. Amund Sjølie Sveen, political and artistic director of the platform ‘Nordting’, Assembly of the North, showed that art can be a means for advocating for social change in situations of inequality. Gathering members from the Far North in Europe and North America, Nordting advocates for the well-being of communities living in the far north through public art installations, protests and debates.
Crossing Europe from the far North to the West, partnerships between culture and politics power up ‘Molenbeek for Brussels 2030‘, the initiative of Brussels-Capital Region for achieving the status of European Capital of Culture 2030. A key part of the bidding strategy is the build-up of youth engagement, such as the Youth Coalition of Molenbeek for Brussels 2030, which produced a participative manifesto on how Brussels should look like in 2030.
Insights from the Summer Academy workshops and cultural activities
From the use of art therapy for mindfulness to practical simulations of direct democracy, the regions from the Summer Academy Organising Committee (SAOC) steered a rich and diverse programme of workshops on how culture can foster youth participation and engagement.
During the Summer Academy, participants also enjoyed a variety of cultural activities and study trips, such as the guided tour of Saltstarumen, the world’s strongest tidal current, of Bodø, European Capital of Culture 2024, and of Kjerringøy, a village on a peninsula with breathtaking landscapes.
How to shape a culture of mental wellbeing: the use of AI by the YRN and Primorje-Gorski Kotar, and art therapy in Maramures, Østfold and Odesa
Mental healing and wellbeing are delicate matters whose care require an interdisciplinary approach. During the workshop on Mental Health, co-led by the Youth Regional Network (YRN), and the region of Primorje-Gorski Kotar (Croatia) from the AER Working Group on Mental Health, participants explored how AI tools and art therapy can support mental well-being. For example, through large quantities of data, AI tools on mobile devices can monitor mental health disorders, propose treatments based on virtual reality and support the development of supportive chatbots. At local level, the region of Primorje-Gorski Kotar used AI-powered tools for the project HelpTo, which enables smooth implementation of health services such as administering test results and booking medical exams, and which facilitates regular monitoring of mental health struggles.
As Primorje-Gorski Kotar provided an overview of how AI can foster well-being, the regions of Maramures (Romania), Østfold (Norway), and Odesa (Ukraine), explored how art therapy can foster mindfulness and nurture personal development through art. From drawing spontaneous patterns to sharing reasons for frustration and gratefulness, participants experienced the capacity of art to understand and release repressed feelings.
Creating a culture of political participation: direct democracy in Zürich and student participation in decision-making processes in Vojvodina
Across European regions, cultures of political participation differ greatly. The Autonomous Province of Vojvodina (Serbia) and the Canton of Zürich (Switzerland) offered examples of how their regions foster a culture of political participation among and with young people.
Among the first in the world for active political participation, the Zürich Youth Parliament aimed to make participants understand and engage with direct democracy. By simulating a popular referendum on bringing the voting age to 16, participants discussed the pros and cons of giving decision-making responsibility to young people, and shared views on whether direct democracy could be exported outside the Swiss context. As shared by the facilitators, Gianluca Coccitti and Moritz Elsner, young and senior Swiss citizens value direct democracy for its representativeness and inclusiveness, characteristics which enable them to contribute to the political life of their community, as demonstrated by the comprehensive programme of activities by the Zürich Youth Parliament.
The workshop by the Autonomous Province of Vojvodina brought into focus the role of the Student Parliament at the University of Novi Sad, the second largest city in Serbia. Its statutory goal of immediate representation of the students body is ensured by its involvement in the definition of the regional Action Plan, which accounts for all actions, positions, analysis, needs and problems of young people in the Vojvodina Autonomous Province. The 2023-2025 Action Plan identifies the four key areas: of dignified work conditions for young people, active participation of young people in society, spaces for young people and areas of personal development of young people. The importance of implementing effectively these areas of action is acknowledged by the regional leadership, which funded relevant activities with €4 million, the highest budget in 10 years.
Opening up spaces for social inclusion: interculturalism in Donegal, building the future in Nordland, co-creating recipes in Catalonia, and cultural richness in the Gaeltacht
Consistent and continuous cultural dialogue is fundamental to shape inclusive communities, as highlighted by the workshop by Donegal County Council on the ongoing EU-funded EU-Belong project. The workshop was an opportunity to highlight the importance of the collaboration between the public sector and NGOs powering up the implementation of EU-Belong.
Consistently with the outward-looking approach of EU-Belong, focused on building a better future, the workshop by the Narvik War and Peace Center (Nordland, Norway) inspired participants to think about how a utopian land could have looked like, pushing them to imagine its fundamental laws and societal structure. By re-imagining present and future, participants had the opportunity to discuss existing societal structures and plan a fairer, more equitable political community.
Diversity as richness was the red thread between the workshops by Catalonia (Spain), Údarás na Gaeltachta / Muintearas (Ireland) and Sàmi Pathfinders. While Catalonia challenged participants to imagine a decolonised public space by blending different cultures through a metaphorical cooking, Údarás na Gaeltachta made participants experience the liveliness of Irish music and traditions through a live exhibition of local artists. During the workshop by Sàmi Pathfinders, an educational initative promoted by the Norwegian regional and national governments, participants had the opportunity to discover more on the Sàmi bond with their ancestral land, as well as on the richness of their culture and legacy, which unites them across borders and crosses the years.
The Erasmus+ “Climbing the Ladder” (CL-YE) project at the Summer Academy
The Summer Academy 2024 was part of the first study visit organised within the Erasmus+ project Climbing the Ladder (CL-YE). All the partners involved from DYPALL, Europiamo, EDYN, Nordland County Council and the AER joined meetings with representatives of public and private sectors working in the field of youth engagement and participation in decision-making processes. From politics to business, the partners had access to best practices elaborated by Norwegian regional/local institutions and companies to boost youth inclusion in society and culture. The results will be available in a future report of the project. Find more about the CL-YE project here.
The project is led by DYPALL Network in partnership with Europiamo (Italy), Nordland County Council (Norway), EDYN (Slovakia), AER, SQLearn (Greece), under the Erasmus+ Programme.
