Story sharing A booklet for narrative identity and dialogue

In the summer 2024 a group of 30 youth workers lived together in a co-housing experience of 8 days experimenting with different tools and methods to tell stories and create dialogue around our identities.

They exchanged their experience with performing arts, comics, illustration and communication.

The training was hosted by the Sanctuary of Roccaporena and the local multi-stakeholders HUB Territori Intraprendenti who is running a project to transform an old orphanage into a place of interdisciplinary collaboration for socio-cultural welfare. The objective of the HUB project is to foster cultural participation in the rural area, to rediscover and reinvent together the identity of places and the cultural and natural heritage, involving in this process young people who have with limited access to facilities and opportunities. Other targets are the "care leavers”, the hikers and slow tourists.

Cascia is situated in one of the Rural Areas of Italy, which offers a perfect opportunity for our trainers to practice their skills with the local youth, bringing to them stories from foreign countries, providing them the chance to have an intercultural exchange and practice their English and communication skills.

OUR ERASMUS TRAINING

After some community building activities the training started with a dialogue session on “storytelling” followed by a presentation of the Erasmus+ programme opportunities and meet the international organization partners of the project.

Then we started our work on the methods exploring each day at least two different techniques.

During the last days we brainstormed on tools to create a space for safe sharing and reflected and evaluate on our own experience. This part of the training has incorporated the experience of SPIN and Sconfinando, and their work inspired by the Living library and Human Library projects.

We held an Open Space Technology where participants suggested a topic to discuss or an activity to try and we dedicated one day to explore the local projects.

The public event: Hitchhiking story

We also opened one of the day to the participation of the local communtity.

On the 25th of June the youth workers organized a public event where they shared with our guests techniques such as illustration and storygami to tell their stories, that they exchanged and experimented during the week.

The first second of the afternoon was dedicated to a storytelling following the format of Vite in Autostop, already experimented several times by Sconfinando APS:

the youth workers shared their stories with the youth, in a one to one conversation, in rounds of 20 minutes.

The youth workers then offered workshops designed for the local youth during the training to experiment the different techniques.

This experience will also aim to create a moment of exchange of different perceptions on what a rural area can offer to both locals and temporary passengers, and the beauty and challenge of living in a remote place.

We has created a video storytelling on this encounters, soon on youtube! While observations and contributions from our participants and guests will be included in our booklet.