The Music Video Performance Encounter Across Borders As a Creative Community-Building Experience for Social Cohesion Among Young People. The European Project CommUnity

Abstract

One of the most widespread problems among young people, leading to serious forms of social unrest, is the lack of a sense of social inclusion and belonging. For this reason, the Project CommUnity. Build Communities - Create Peace! (2019-2021) involved eleven partners from seven European Countries –Belgium, France, Italy, Spain, Germany, the Netherlands, and Croatia– in order to build up and develop a cross-generational intercultural dialogue through the creation of communities of people who share a passion for the arts and music. A group of seven persons, chosen among students, graduates and junior researchers of the University of Florence, was created for the development of a musical and theatrical video performance on the issue of an of intercultural dialogue among peoples. The intercultural music band worked under the supervision of the University of Florence research team, through the implementation of art-based methodological approaches, and the ‘design thinking’ process. This paper focuses on the importance of creativity and art-based approaches in building communities, while it underlines the relevance of the artistic and cultural contexts within which their members can share visions and experience. Through the video images the evocative power of Florence landscape is clearly emphasized: when the performers meet different people in the midst of monuments, squares, ancient buildings and real or metaphorical bridges across the Arno River.