Lovely Ruins: training "How to do a Festival to recover spaces"

We want to offer a theoretical and practical training for youth workers and volunteers that work in the frame of non-formal education, giving them tools based on creativity and innovation to improve their ability to conceive ideas, plan and run their own project for the rural development.

The training course will be structured in three different moments: P.1) theoretical and practical session. P.2) practical activities: team work, planning strategies. P.3) application of the acquired knowledge into a practical case.

We will carry out a concrete project to put the new knowledge and concepts to a practical use. The project, VI Festival del’ArT 2015, takes place in an ancient castle of s. XI where the village of Oliana used to be until 100 years ago. Today there are only ruins and we are trying to revitalize it.

We already have achieved to recover the space creating a garden for roses and lavender with sculptures integrated into the ruins but a lot of work still needs to be done. We also collected documents and interviews to the last villagers that used to live there and we edited a book.
The project is the result of the effort and the collaboration of many people at different levels. The villagers, belonging to every generation, participated working together; other associations, public and private institution collaborated and professional artists contributed with their works encouraging the participation of emerging artists (musicians, theatre actors, painters...).

The course's aim is to give the participants the chance to participate actively in the Festival and to contribute in its organization. This exercise will highlight the complexity of organizing such an intervention and the strategies needed to overcome the obstacles.

Objectives:
• Give the participants the know-how needed to organize social and cultural interventions in different European context for the development of the rural area and/or suburbs.
• Give them conceptual and methodological tools to be able to develop their own project about recovering and restoring abandoned or disused spaces or marginal areas.
• Give them instruments to identify the different fields of application of the knowledge according to their cultural and demographic context.
• Apply the acquired knowledge in the course to a practical case like the Festival, participating actively in its organization and development.
• Create a moment to discuss, to share experiences and good practices.

Needs:
Many of the problems of the rural area come from the lack of services, the depopulation and the risk of isolation; these are the reasons why interventions that help to cover basic services are favoured while social and cultural activities are left aside.

On one hand there's a great potential in the rural area given by the historical, natural and cultural heritage, but on the other one the lack of resources, especially the economic ones, makes it difficult for the professional to develop their works. It's important to renovate constantly and think up innovative projects to overcome the obstacles and to foster the participation of the village.

We, as CAUdel'ArT, want to show to other professionals creative and innovative strategies in order to give them instruments to face such problems and to look after the needs of their community in a better way.

Professionals that work with groups living in suburbs or in marginal areas can apply these strategies at the same way, applying creative interventions to value their spaces.

We want to invite different professionals that could participate in the training process contributing at the same time with their knowledge and experience in this field.