European Cultural and Oral Heritage Mediation by Youth (France/Bulgaria) : to recompose rural mediterranean interland territory on the decline – Erasmus Project

Project Title

European Cultural and Oral Heritage Mediation by Youth (France/Bulgaria) : to recompose rural mediterranean interland territory on the decline –

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : Strategic Partnerships for youth

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2019

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses; Research and innovation; Creativity and culture

Project Summary

The aim is to demonstrate that mediatisation of this Oral Heritage (spoken words, songs, folk tales linked to a « Sense of Place ») by young people can be a new resource for fragile rural mountain areas. One of the main objectives of the project is to formalize in a teaching module the mediation tools experienced during the project, thus facilitating their transmission to any young European wanting to become a mediator of their own heritage. The project seeks to improve the articulation of four stages necessary for mediation: the surveying and geographical reading of the territories, the work of collecting from the inhabitants, the artistic reinterpretation in the form of unusual artistic performances dedicated to the arts of speech, the valorization to residents and tourists alike of these new objects of cultural heritage and tourist attractions to discover.
The project is the result of a meeting between three protagonists who, in addition to their trades, seek to pass on their skills to young people. The first strategic partner, pilot of the project is a French cultural actor – the Compagnie des Théatre des Chemins – This Company will play the role of coordinator and booster of innovation. The second partner is a Bulgarian association active in the field of eco-tourism – BAAT (Bulgarian Association for Alternative Tourism’s) – BAAT will guarantee the concrete transformations induced by the project in social and economic realities. Finally, the third partner is specialized in the field of training and research on Heritage – CERMOSEM. It is a branch of the University of Grenoble Alpes, located in Ardèche – CERMOSEM will play a role of in-appraiser, that is to say, to have a reflexive look on all the actions undertaken in course of the project.
The project meets different needs. Its goal is to develop new Heritage and Cultural mediation methods based on the meeting with the inhabitants of these territories (inter-generational and citizen meetings); to keep young people in rural areas by strengthening their ties of attachment to their territory and especially by encouraging them to be entrepreneurs in the territories through the development of their Cultural Heritage. It is also a question of accompanying a transition of tourism practices to make them less consumer-based and more contributing to the structuring of territories and their social and cultural fabric. The mediation of Oral Heritage, worked and seized by young people is one of the ways to overcome these various needs.
In order to work with the formal and informal skills of each and everyone, two intellectual productions mobilizing each of the partners are planned: The establishment of a corpus of spoken words of inhabitants, stories, songs, folk tales and the creation of an intercultural trading platform. The aim is togathering actors : young mediators, local authorities, artist, touristic actors, who could mobilize this corpus in order to increase the value of their region : “oral heritage collection and intercultural trading platform” (n°1). The second intellectual production is the creation of a training module for young people enrolled in formal and informal education (No. 2). Those training module will be created upon the training provided during the project which have a part of experimental way. The originality is that the young can immerge themselves in the process of a shared creation with professional artists and take part of the final artistic performance with an audience. Thus, two international trainings workshops are planned in France and Bulgaria 32 young French and Bulgarians. These mixed groups will mix young people from university-level education and more self-taught young people with more entrepreneurial profiles, however, with the same interest: to become mediators of the European Cultural Heritage. The bi-national dimension of the project is indispensable: whether it is collections of words spoken by French people in Bulgarian territories, or conversely collections of Bulgarian words in French territories, this is a way of experiencing the mediations that the project itself seeks to implement and validate between tourists and inhabitants. The partnership has chosen to restrict itself to a bi-national dimension given the exploratory nature and the complexity induced by the theme of orality (stakes on larger translations). However, to ensure the transferability of the module and tools to European territories, not necessarily located in the Mediterranean hinterland (case of the first 2 territories of experimentation), a third training workshop based on a shared creation will be prepared in a new territory (in Savoie or Northern Italy) with young people from a third country, Italy. This last experiment will accompany an international and inter-generational seminar where the crossed results of the different intellectual productions will be presented.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 244906 Eur

Project Coordinator

Trib’Alt Coopérative de Cies et d’artistes & Country: FR

Project Partners

• UNIVERSITE GRENOBLE ALPES
• Balgarska asotsiatsiya za alternativen turizam