Participatory and visual methods to get the European Union closer to young people, “Workshop of creative and responsible communication” to cover the Road to 2020

“Road to 2020” is an European Commission co-funded project aiming to develop an innovative practice to teach the EU to youngsters involving them in studying and understanding its values and policies. In particular, through participatory methods, the project intended to favour active European citizenship asking the students their own direct commitment to the conception and production of audio-visual products aimed at the promotion of the EU strategy for 2020. The methodology of participatory video has been used with didactical purposes in an informal way of teaching through a tool that Scomunicati Association conceived ad hoc, named “Workshop of creative and responsible communication”. Ten classes of students aged 11-13 participated to these workshops, which had as result ten short videos entirely conceived and realised by them, focused on the five priorities of "Europe 2020” strategy. These topics were presented in the first part of the workshop, starting from the e-book “European citizenship towards 2020”, written by the Scientific Committee from University of Bologna. The videos are characterised by a language and a style typical of young people and are suitable to the disclosure of the subject in peer groups, as well as possible paradigm for future training experiences on European issues.