#PeripheralEncounters are supporting cultural and youth life in rural areas and enhance local ecosystems that stimulate participation and collaboration to tackle main challenges of those territories.

They created open spaces to exchanges between people and local organisations in order:
1. to break isolation and foster participation of local changemakers;
2. to support networking and collaboration between creative initiatives;
3. to generate new narratives about youth life in rural areas;

Alto Palancia County, inland part of Castellón province, beginning of the so called "Empty Spain"

The main challenge we are tackling with this project is YOUTH DEPOPULATION in the county.

Main problem:
- FRAGMENTATION OF THE COMMUNITY with a dominant feeling of being left away from the political and cultural “epicentres” (cities, state, European Union…)
- LACK OF OPPORTUNITIES for young people (job, housing, communication, cultural activities...);
- the ISOLATION of social, cultural and educational stakeholders and the need to impulse collaborative strategies to define collective answers to common problems…

We identified from previous projects the strong impact of cultural activities on the local community. So we will use those creative spaces to set up a participatory diagnostic regarding youth depopulation and to establish local based strategies to revert this tendency.

One of the main project goal is to support a group/community of local people and organisations participating in local and cultural development in the territory. Key figures of this community will be:
- YOUNG PEOPLE (15-35 years old) living in rural areas;
- CIVIL SOCIETY ORGANISATIONS (associations, small local companies...) willing to support youth initiatives in their territory;
- other STAKEHOLDERS interested in the project: artists, cultural managers, teachers, researchers, journalists...

To better support this community development, we are working in close relationship with TERRITORIAL PUBLIC ADMINSTRATIONS, DECISIONS MAKERS and LOCAL POPULATION to always foster the integration of its activities and generate outputs that answer to local needs.

The main activities to be implemented are:
1. Call for participants to select 8 local projects. Promoters will become members of a local working group that will be in charge to design and arrange #PeripheralEncounters for year;
2. Selected promoters will participate in a study visit in Corsica to get to know a good practice model of rural development through Arts;
3. Monthly group workshop to foster collective intelligence and collaborations between projects;
4. Development of collaborative online environment;
5. Each of the selected promotors will organize 2 #PeripheralEncounters: one as hosting organisation and another one online;
6. Impact evaluation involving the community and local, regional and european stakeholders

- Participation and collaboration of 8 local based initiatives to set up concrete proposals to face local challenges within the youth field;
- Organisation of 10 open workshops to foster participatory and collaborative approaches and 1 study visit abroad;
- Organisation of 8 #PeripheralEncounters in the territory;
- Organisation of 8 online Encounters to increase and strengthen the #PeripheralCommunity;
- Realisation of a participatory diagnostic regarding youth depopulation and drafting local based strategies to revert this tendency;
- Strengthen collaboration between creative changemakers and local population and decision makers;
- Development of new youth and creative initiatives in the territory;
- Better recognition of the county in the regional/national context;

1. BREAKING ISOLATION AND FOSTERING PARTICIPATION: we generates meeting spaces and moments between cultural, social and/or educational agents so that they can get to know each other, exchange ideas, inspire and support each other.

2. ENCOURAGING NETWORKING AND COLLABORATIONS: designed from civil society and following participatory and horizontal processes, we implement collective intelligence mechanisms and tools to encourage mutual learning and promote the design of collective solutions to shared problems.

3. INTRODUCING NEW NARRATIVES: #PeripheralEncounters promote initiatives that take advantage of developing outside the urban, cultural, or economic epicentres to consider new paradigms and experience creative and sustainable solutions to the great challenges of our time.

With this proposal we will explore the peripheral areas and support new perspectives based on community and territories needs and collective imaginations. We strongly believe that rural areas are key territories for future and we want to open spaces for dreaming and building up collectively some of the answers that only rural communities could bring.

By realising our pilot project from october 2019 to april 2020, we quickly understood that those spaces for sharing, learning, experimenting and collaborating we started to open in the county were the one that local changemakers were expecting. Even the world pandemic crisis could not stop this process since this new "peripheral community" decided by itself to keep on organizing those #PeripheralEncounters virtualy every friday.

- Communication costs: 1.800€
- Office expenses (coworking): 1.200€
- Study visit in Corsica: 12.000€ (not requested)
- 8 #PeripheralEncounters Insite: 16.000€
- 8 #Peripheral Encounters Online: 4.000€
- Monthly workshops (11 months): 8.250€
- Online development (open source platform and ressources): 6000€
- Project management and coordination (3 PAX): 28.800€ (not requested)

Please let us know about any clarifications you think that would be needed to better understand our project idea.