Resilience, Art and Development in youth work and communities Against violent Radicalisation of youTh

Background We initially applied for this project in order to answer the needs of young people who are at risk of poverty or social exclusion. This target group represents 25,3% of the youth population in the European Union (Eurostat 2021), a percentage that has decreased since we applied for the project as it was 27% in 2019. We thus wanted to address this specific target group as part of a project dealing with the fight against radicalisation as their personal circumstances and the environment in which they live may make them vulnerable to various violent radical influences. Youth radicalisation has become a growing issue in Europe and its neighbouring regions. Even though the media generally highlight cases mainly related to religious forms of extremism, there has always also been a notable increase in hate speech, incidence of hate crimes and attacks on migrants and refugees, propaganda and violent xenophobia, that underlines the importance of being aware of all the forms that radicalisation can take. As a result, we deemed it essential to increase awareness and skills among youth workers and other professionals working with marginalised young people to help them find an efficient and effective way to engage with young people at risk of radicalisation. Objectives By implementing this project we aimed to: develop accessible and innovative methodologies and promote collaboration among complementary organisations in order to improve competences of youth workers through capacity-building activities, raise awareness of the impact of art on young people at risk of radicalisation through action research, artistic methodologies, and local and international events, improve critical thinking skills of young people by involving them in a research and by using art, raise awareness of the risks of extremism and radicalisation among family members and communities through accessible guidelines. Implementation As part of Radart project we implemented the following activities: - Action research with the development of questionnaires to have a first contact with our target group, identify their needs and tools we will need to promote tolerance (exceeding result), - Identification of good practices, innovative methodologies, multimedia resources to be incorporated in a manual for youth workers to recognise and prevent radicalisation processes, - National pilots of training courses for youth workers in all partner countries, - Organisation of an EU training model, - Desk based research to analyse the role of family members in preventing radicalisation, the existing services and the ways how communities can support such families, - Development of modules to be incorporated in the guidelines for local communities and family members, - National pilots with community members in all partner countrie, - In depth analysis of the outcomes of the previous activities in order to define clear and innovative policy recommendations for policy makers, regional actors, schools and youth worker training providers, - Consultation with partners and with representatives of public local institutions to collect their input for improvement of the final recommendations. Achievements As part of Radart project we were able to produce with the partnership all the following outputs: - An EU Manual for youth workers including creative and digital methodologies to recognise and prevent radicalisation processes - Guidelines for local communities and family members - Policy Recommendations In addition to this, we have developed exceeding results, such as: national and EU reports o young people’s perspectives on art as a tool to engage with youth, 1 video on the LTTA held in Macerata and 1 activity including podcasts and storytelling methodologies.