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Next Stop: Hope

Aim of the project

This project, supported by the Bosch Foundation of Stuttgart and Cassa di Risparmio di Asti, is to stimulate students to secondary schools in different countries (Italy, Greece, France and Germany) to reflect on the concept of European identity.
It is a concept often mentioned in official documents of the European Union and in speeches of many politicians, but hard to understand if one does not see it connected to everyday life situations.
Yet to create a common identity is a crucial objective for Europe and for its future, at a time of economic crisis, and social and cultural context in which there is a resurface of nationalism and political conceptions unable to think of a common development in the European sense.
European society is increasingly multicultural, by virtue of population shifts that have occurred since the middle of the last century: today in Italy there are about 756.000 non Italian students, and in some schools their number rises to 45%. The percentage of students who were born in Italy from foreign parents is very large.
In view of these data, which show the demographic changes, the project “Next Stop Hope” invites young people to tell the stories of migration of their families and their daily effort to integrate the mentality and traditions of their native countries with the Italian ones.
These stories and life experiences will be transformed into “graphic novels”.
The stories, written and drawn by students from various countries will be uploaded on this website and we expect to achieve a volume to be published at the end of the project.

Planned Activities

The Italian group will organize two 2 introductory lessons, about 2 hours each, to be held in the participating schools.
The first lecture , held by Andrea Villa, Pan European University of Banja Luka (Bosnia), collaborator of the Institute for the History of Resistance and Contemporary Society of Turin (Istoreto), and Flavio Febbraro of Istoreto, will present an introduction of the history of migrations to and from Italy (from the late nineteenth century until today) and the history of the European Union.
The second lesson will be held by experts of the “Ass. Alfa – Centro del Fumetto” Asti, as a workshop to teach some techniques to design and help students in writing the “storyboard” and in realizing some stripes.

Time Schedule

The project will start from September 2014 to finish by the end of the school year, with an awards ceremony to be held in Asti in Spring 2015.

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