Training Young People on Augmented Reality Authoring Showcasing Intangible Cultural Assets as Use Cases

While Covid-19 has caused immeasurable disruption to the social, economic and educational system across the globe, it concurrently stimulated the acceleration of technological advancements and innovations to counteract the inestimable impacts of the pandemic and further facilitate the adaptation of the society to the unprecedented demands of the virtual environment with Augmented Reality (AR) to be one of those seen an exponential growth during this period (Le and Dinh 2021). The need to train young people on advanced digital skills becomes now a vitality taking into consideration different policy frameworks under implementation at an EU level pushing towards technological development and transformation (e.g. European Digital Strategy; Digital Education Action Plan).

Acknowledging the global need to preserve our cultural heritage aptly documented in the New Agenda for Culture (EC 2018), the scope of the AR4Youth project centralised at training young people in conceiving, designing and implementing an AR project for digitising and augmenting books, guides or manuals by using as case studies fairy tales and myths in Greek, Lithuanian and Estonian. To address this goal, the project aimed to achieve the following objectives: - To enhance advanced digital skills (i.e., use of AR technologies) of young people with special emphasis on NEETs; - To equip young people with competitive qualifications for either entering the labour market or for conceiving their own entrepreneurial future; - To raise the awareness of young people on the cultural heritage aspects of partner countries; - To sensitise them into the importance of preserving cultural heritage and more specifically the traditional fairy tales, myths and legends through digitisation; - To increase the quality and innovation of youth work through the creation of advanced digital training.

The project evolved around three Project Results; PR1 aimed at developing the Training Material of the project consisting of 10 fairy tales and myths to be used for digitisation and augmentation. PR2 related to the actual development of the AR Facilitator which guided the users into distinct steps for the development of an AR project by focusing on the conceptualisation, design and implementation of the project. PR2 additionally engaged a youth team called “Youth Consultants” to pilot the AR Facilitator by digitising and augmenting the Training Material produced in PR1; Finally, PR3 focused on the development of the AR4Youth Impact Evaluation Kit to be used by young individuals and youth workers to assess the knowledge and skills gained from the use of the AR Facilitator in order to receive the project’s Certificate. A Training Activity was organised in Lithuania in order to equip routh workers and trainers with the necessary knowledge and skills required for delivering the AR4Youth training to young people and young NEETs effectively. Finally, five multiplier events to diffuse the project results in the local communities in Cyprus, Lithuania, Greece, Netherlands and Estonia were organised.

Besides the tangible results produced by the project, namely, the AR4Youth Training Material, the AR4Youth Facilitator and the AR4Youth Impact Evaluation Kit, the project: provided increased awareness on the concepts of Augmented Reality and Design Thinking Methodology; enhanced advanced digital skills of young people and NEETs in particular allowing them to (re)enter the labour market or develop an entrepreneurial mindset; promoted the preservation of cultural heritage which can be achieved through innovative technologies; appreciated the importance of cultural heritage.