AT A GLANCE
The VALID project aims at building a strong network of towns committed to intercultural exchange, using a bottom-up approach and through promotion of cultural participation. Cultural participation is seen as a tool for improving social inclusion, active citizenship and intercultural dialogue, as well as fostering solidarity and respect for cultural diversity. The partnership involves Kosovo*, Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Albania, North Macedonia, Italy, Montenegro, France, Greece and Slovenia. Considering the emerging intercultural tensions and social disharmony, together with the raise of citizen’s discontent and their demand for more inclusion in policy making all over Europe, there is an evident need to invest in cultural diversity and dialogue. Therefore, VALID aims at reinforcing the integration of intercultural and social perspectives into a wide range of public policies, using them as a concept and as a policy tool basis for managing diversity and finally, for recognising European cities as key players in intercultural policy.
To cope with this new socio–economical and spatial changes, there is a need for cooperation and intercultural dialogue in order to reduce the risk of exclusion. Exclusion is nourished by economic shortages, cultural incomprehension and marginalisation of a growing part of the urban population. VALID pinpoints cultural participation as an effective tool for establishing and upholding this process, generating counter narratives and providing a more inclusive pathway for citizen’s participation in policy making while raising awareness on key social issues.
OBJECTIVES
The project aims at building a strong network of towns committed to intercultural exchange, using a bottom-up approach and the promotion of cultural participation. Cultural participation is seen as a tool for improving social inclusion, active citizenship, and intercultural dialogue, as well as fostering solidarity and respect for cultural diversity. In its bigger picture, the project openly aims at bridging the local and the European level, building cooperation from a grassroots approach, and at the same time constructing a European network creating a wider common intercultural frame. Go for it, VALID!
ACTIVITIES
- Four international events over the course of two years -in Greece, Slovenia, Italy and Kosovo*- which will provide the occasion to share good practices and suggestions to improve intercultural dialogue in local policy making of EU Country Members, Candidate States and Potential Candidate States.
- Working meetings among project partners during which a common methodology for the local paths development will be shared, in order to assure coherence to the activities to be developed in the different contexts and comparability of results.
- In between the events, each partner will organise a series of local activities employing various working methods: coffee house meetings, interactive toolkits, community engaged art forms and street actions with citizens.