Covid-19 created an unprecedented crisis, impacting people’s life, education, and the Cultural and Creative Sectors. The ENACTING project focuses on urban areas that present high levels of cultural heterogeneity and social inequality. Documentaries can have a considerable social impact, as they can challenge dominant narratives, build community relationships, and create social change. Documentary films generate empathy, illuminating new perspectives and activating powerful emotions. Audiences can get inspired and feel empowered and motivated to bring social change. Empathy created by storytelling can be fuel for action.
In ENACTING, we present a method for civic engagement that uses video documentaries to capture discourses within focused local settings and transfer them to online spaces. Our method aims to facilitate creativity, innovation, and active citizenship, as well as the exchange of perspectives between communities across these spaces.
Therefore, the ENACTING project aims to:
– promote common values, inclusion, civic engagement, and participation through skills development in the arts and innovative digital practices
– identify social challenges in local contexts, and provide a concrete methodology for doing so
– promote skills development in the artistic digital practice of developing a social documentary by providing web-based training on social documentary development (ENACTING MOOC). The online course will enable learners to rethink local challenges in a creative way, and to put forward potential solutions to those, thus contributing to their community.
– foster social inclusion and cross-cultural dialogue, through the ENACTING Participatory Media Lab. The ENACTING Participatory Media Lab is created to promote audience development and the use of digital means to disseminate social documentaries contributing to the recovery of the Cultural and Creative Sectors.
The ENACTING Online Course and Participatory Media Lab will empower citizens in the focused local communities. They are ultimately targeted to all adults – youth and youth workers, seniors, trainers and educators, artists, migrants and refugees, disadvantaged groups, and any other interested persons. Also, the project targets local authorities, policy makers, grassroots and community organisations, youth clubs/centres, adult education institutions, local CCS, NGOs, social cooperatives and HEIs in arts and digital media education.
