THE USE OF NON-CONVENTIONAL DISSEMINATION TOOLS FOR PROMOTING AWARENESS IN SUSTAINABLE FOOD PRODUCTION: THE EXPERIENCE OF THE H2020 FOODE PROJECT IN THE PRIMARY SCHOOLS OF BOLOGNA (ITALY)

One of the aims of the H2020 FoodE project (grant agreement 862663) is to promote awareness and engage school pupils towards themes such as food production, climate changes, food security and sovereignty, city-region food systems (CRFS) and agroecology. The project, based on active citizen engagement through specific actions targeting school pupils, started at the beginning of 2020, and required for adaption to the restrictions and regulations imposed for COVID containment. As far as the primary schools were concerned, to capture the attention of pupils and involve them in the project, animations, comics and interactive quizzes were used as non-conventional dissemination tools. This methodology proved to be viable and was maintained beyond the pandemics. To start, pupils were involved in a contest for drawing the mascot of the FoodE project: a superhero or a superheroine that would help humans to save the planet. The competition was extended to the European countries involved in the project and more than 100 drawings were submitted. The winner drawing, the superhero Terrix, a pot with a plant with a super-intelligence, became the main character of two animations. Terrix has sought solutions to human and environmental problems and has brought its spectators to the discovering of the imaginary city of Sustainabilia, drawn by pupils. All superheroes and superheroines were involved in the adventures of Terrix by using comics as tool of tale: comics described to the readers the new sustainable strategies for food production and brought them to visit the FoodE pilot projects, examples of sustainable CRFS initiatives. Simultaneously, pupils have been involved in a journey through food history, starting from “The food of future – Making a microgreen!” – each pupil received a kit for cultivating microgreens. The journey was continued towards “The food of present” – pupils learnt to read a food label and played to guess the origin and seasonality of food. The journey was concluded by a leap into the food of the past starting from the food habits of ancient civilization and arriving to those of the middle of XIX century. Pupils were invited to write a recipe of a dish that elderly people ate in their youth, with support of their grandfathers. The recipes resulting from the exercise were then collected into a book. At the end of the activities, a survey was distributed to the pupils from primary schools involved in the FoodE project to test the appreciation towards the dissemination tools used and the awareness increase about the food they eat. The level of appreciation that the Terrix animations and comics have achieved among pupils from primary schools was very high and excellent results have been obtained in recognising the origin and seasonality of food: these results have showed that the dissemination methods adopted (quizzes, games, comic) were effective. Finally, teachers have been enthusiastic about the proposed activities as witnessed by the invitations received to replicates the activities in other schools.