Youth in the City: Fostering Transcultural Leadership for Social Change

Abstract

When considering the impact of migrants’ creative practices within superdiverse urban environments and their ability to both represent and engender linguistic, cultural and social change, there is a tendency to rigidly demarcate and separate the crucial roles played by artists, researchers, educators, students and activists. Furthermore, little consideration is usually given to the development of transcultural and multilingual youth’s ability to lead and engender such changes. The focus tends to be on the impact of the final artistic product, rather than on the impact of the complex participatory processes through which many of these artistic products have been developed. Drawing from the transdisciplinary work we conducted for our Youth in the City initiative (YITC), this chapter challenges these prevailing assumptions. Using the La Nostra Prato project (2019–2020) as an illustrative example, we suggest an alternative model for understanding and engendering social and cultural change: one that focuses on the transdisciplinary and transcultural processes through which young people in superdiverse urban contexts develop leadership skills through creative practices.

In loving memory of Salvatore Iaconesi, who taught us the meaning and power of facing the world with a sense of “meraviglia”.

1 Introduction

Youth in the City (YITC) is an international, multidisciplinary research initiative that promotes digital participatory action research (PAR) with multicultural and migrant youth as an effective response to the xenophobic content that readily spreads on social media and in public discourse. We work with young people across the world to reclaim urban space and imagine shared transcultural futures through participatory map**, co-designed creative interventions and digital storytelling. In 2019, we conducted the first project in Prato, Italy. Home to over 120 different nationalities (Ufficio di Statistica, Comune di Prato, 2020), the city is one of the most studied cases of multiculturalism in Italy and has become, over the years, “a European ‘hotspot’ for migration and integration issues” (Baldassar et al., 2015, p. 8). It is also a place where we witness first-hand how migration flows generate “transcultural edges” – that is, new and innovative spaces – “where unevenly distributed different cultural systems, representations, imaginaries converge and give rise to new transcultural practices” (Vanni, 2016, p. 7). Against this background, we collaborated with local high schools to conduct a participatory action project with 48 high-school students, many of whom had migrant backgrounds. Entitled La Nostra Prato (Youth in the City, 2021), the project applied the YITC methodology to develop creative processes that could foster leadership skills and an enthusiasm for social change among this culturally diverse group of young people, who have the potential to play a vital role in bringing together their communities, fostering social cohesion and building socio-economic resilience. Their lived experiences across different cultures, languages and social contexts provide the potential for great leadership within increasingly complex, transcultural and multilingual societies. Recognising that such potential is often hindered by a combination of factors, including a lack of confidence and different forms of discrimination at the intersection of class, ethnicity, race, gender, sexual orientations and physical abilities, we sought to redress this imbalance by providing an opportunity for multiethnic youth to engage in a range of digital creative interventions that would enable them to have a say on issues that matter to them.

Using the La Nostra Prato pilot project as an example, we suggest an alternative model for understanding and engendering social and cultural change; one that focuses on the transdisciplinary and transcultural creative practices and processes through which young people in superdiverse urban contexts develop leadership skills. In empowering youth through participatory-action workshops and digital creative interventions and in giving their perspectives enhanced visibility at the local, national and global levels, YITC fosters an understanding of leadership as a purposeful, collaborative, values-based process that results in positive social change. Our approach is founded on three pillars: it is transcultural, transdisciplinary and participatory. Transcultural, as we focus on the creative potential of different languages and cultures coming together and influencing each other, in turn fostering social cohesion within superdiverse communities. The term transcultural emphasises the productive nature of cultural encounters and exchanges in develo** new cultural formations (see Franzenburg, 2020; Welsch, 1999). Transdisciplinary, as we aim to bridge the gaps between research, creative practices, entrepreneurship, education and civic engagement. Participatory, as transcultural processes need to be led by local communities and to nurture local leadership, especially amongst young people.

In this chapter, we first explore how digital storytelling (DST) and participatory-action research (PAR) can be used to engage with students across all levels of education to challenge mainstream narratives of national cultural homogeneity. We then discuss the model of participatory storytelling that we developed alongside participants over the course of the workshops we ran for the La Nostra Prato project. We analyse in detail how participatory map**, DST and photovoice activities, co-designing an exhibition and processes of divergent and convergent thinking were all deployed to help students to reclaim a creative and productive space for self-representation and to gain confidence in their own voices. Finally, we conclude by reflecting on the interactive storytelling experience and set of educational guidelines that we produced as part of the project, discussing the critical role that replicability, accessibility and open-access all play for cultural and research activities that aim to promote the active participation of transcultural youth in research and policy development.

2 Transcultural Leadership, Participatory Action Research and Digital Storytelling Methodologies

Scientists almost unanimously point out that our societies operate way beyond the regenerative capacity of our planet (Friedman, 2018; Rockström et al., 2009). The world, in the coming decades, will be one of huge regional and class differences, increased polarisation and social strife (Randers, 2012). At the same time, globalisation will continue to produce both challenges and opportunities at the local, national and international levels. More than ever before, younger generations will need leaders able to operate within superdiverse societies and their ever-changing constellations of objects, spaces, people, ideas and information. Such leaders will have the difficult task of bridging social and cultural differences, bringing people together and directing their joint efforts towards leverage points that can make our society more sustainable and equitable (Meadows, 2008). When operating in an environment that is volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous, leaders need an approach that differs from the traditional top-down hierarchical chains of command, in which a single person has a clear idea of how to tackle the problems at hand (Chia & Holt, 2009; Mintzberg, 2000; Simeone, 2020). Nowadays, successful and innovative organisations function through more agile and horizontally structured networks. Their leaders strive to bring together individuals and groups of people, especially those who think and behave in ways that nurture relationships of respect and trust and foster a sense of community (Simeone et al., 2020). Leaders realise that it is precisely from the standpoint of this rich assemblage of divergent perspectives that complex problems can be better understood and elaborated on.

When reflecting on how transcultural leadership for social change may develop effectively within specific local contexts, a few key considerations may help to frame the issue. The spaces and places within which we live, work, meet, and perform our identities and ideologies contribute significantly to our sense of social responsibility, civic engagement, social inclusion and psychological well-being or, conversely, our sense of isolation and exclusion (Casinader et al., 2020). Thus, a process that encourages transcultural leadership must facilitate a creative engagement with complex social geographies – that is, a transcultural understanding of space and place and of how we can explore, experience, understand and transform specific localities. In facilitating such a process, we must, on the one hand, recognise the centrality of language – for instance, through multilingual and translanguaging processes that value and employ linguistic and cultural differences (Pennycook & Otsuji, 2014). On the other hand, we should also employ multisensorial approaches that facilitate a complex experience and understanding of transcultural locations, while develo** forms of visual and aural communication that overcome the limitations of language (see, for instance, Schratz, 2009). This becomes particularly apparent when looking at the creative practices developed by young people of migrant background in large multiethnic urban contexts, from innovative everyday language practices to highly successful hip-hop performances (see Angelucci, 2021; Tetreault, 2015).

Our approach to the development of transcultural leadership skills is specifically structured around participatory action research (PAR) and collaboratively designed participatory events (see Bjögvinsson et al., 2012; Chevalier & Buckles, 2019; Delgado, 2015 and Chaps. 10, 11 and 12 in this volume). We understand participatory action as an activist intervention driven by research practices that attempt to involve migrants as co-creators of creative and research outputs that generate public impact. Our methodology is thus based on two fundamental pillars. First, traditional models of interaction between communities and scholars must be challenged, in order to develop more authentic and productive modes of non-linear co-creation between community members and academics. Second, open-source, engaging and interactive access to the data should be provided through digital visualisations and storytelling, to the benefit of policymakers, administrators, community organisations and the broader society (see De Götzen et al., 2018). The importance of the involvement of young people in decision-making processes is often acknowledged when discussing human rights; however, their active participation in research and policy development remains limited (Gal, 2017). The effective promotion of social inclusion and cohesion requires the development of close collaboration and co-production with young migrants, their classmates and other stakeholders (Matras & Robertson, 2017). PAR is thus particularly indicated to gather the perspective of young people (Shamrova & Cummings, 2017).

In order to develop a multifaceted analysis that can better capture, represent and engage with the “heterogeneity, complexity and fluidity” of superdiverse environments (Goodson & Grzymala-Kazlowska, 2017), transcultural methodologies need to be informed by participatory and digital research practices. This requires the development of models of participatory storytelling and visualisation that challenge the divide between the university and the community (Glick Schiller, 2011). It further requires a new focus on migrants’ urban emplacement, understood as the relationship between the constant changes that affect an urban context, the complex transcultural and intersectional networks that develop within that context, and migrants’ ability to acquire and accumulate social, cultural and financial capital within the constraints of that specific locality as well as through complex transnational, translocal and global networks (Glick Schiller & Çağlar, 2013).

The use of storytelling practices that weave personal stories with digital media, including videos, images, sounds, texts, geolocalized data and other elements, is particularly effective when engaging with multiethnic youth, since it provides participants with engaging and interactive ways of expressing themselves and reclaiming their presence in the city. DST approaches are increasingly common in research that seeks to engage with marginalised and disadvantaged communities, “with the recognition that process can be as important as product” (Gifford & Wilding, 2013, p. 562). DST has, indeed, emerged as an effective research method for researchers with an interest in democratising research practices (Ansley & Gaventa, 1997; Gaventa, 1993), challenging power relations between participants and researchers (Flicker, 2008) and recognising participants as co-constructors of knowledge, empowering them with a greater sense of agency (Alexandra, 2008; Lenette, 2017). In the field of migration studies, DST approaches have become increasingly popular in projects that seek to work alongside migrant, refugee and multicultural youth (Chan, 2019; Collie et al., 2010; Lenette et al., 2019; Pienimäki, 2020; Rubesin, 2016; Vecchio et al., 2017). These methods can enable young adults to play a more important role in the research and creative process thanks to their focus on imagery and digital technologies (Johnson, 2009). As Hull (2003) notes, DST methodologies allow young participants to imagine alternative modes of belonging and possible futures, beyond racialised and material contexts. These projects can also increase young people’s participation in civic life by giving voice to their concerns and hopes (Mirra et al., 2013; Morrell et al., 2015). DST methodologies have been successfully used to foster leadership skills, building opportunities for young adults to engage with local communities and policymakers and reclaiming space for self-expression and empowerment (Derr et al., 2013).

3 La Nostra Prato: One Place, Many Cultures

Since the mid-1980s, research on the impact of transnational migration flows on Prato has concentrated mostly on the economic and social impact of the large influx of Chinese migrants (Baldassar et al., 2015; Bracci, 2015; Ceccagno, 2017; Dei Ottati, 2013). The public conceptualisation of Prato as a city shaped mostly by industrial and business practices also contributed to the lack of attention to the city’s rich history of creative processes of transculturation and exchange (Dutto & Del Bono, 2020). Engaging with the complexity of such a diverse city thus requires the adoption of transcultural frameworks that move beyond binary and essentialised understandings of ethnicity to engage, instead, with the permeability between different linguistic and cultural groups (Ricatti et al., 2019) and the importance of informal processes of transculturation (Ricatti et al., 2021).

This is of particular importance when considering how young migrants and children of migrants, whose own sense of belonging is “not easily captured by either immigrant identity approaches or frameworks of hybridity” (Raffaetà et al., 2016, p. 435), can lead creative processes of transculturation and shape new and more complex understandings of superdiverse urban ecosystems. The city of Prato is also a key case study in this aspect if we consider that the number of students who do not hold Italian citizenship enrolled across all levels of education is almost three times that of the national average across Italy, which was 9.7% in the school year 2017/2018 (MIUR – Ufficio Statistica e Studi, 2019, p. 8). Like the main focus of research on Prato, studies on migrant youth and the children of migrants in Prato have, thus far, focused mostly on students of Chinese heritage (Baldassar & Raffaetà, 2018; Ceccagno, 2004; Paciocco, 2018), stressing how, despite the acts of racism, xenophobia and classism displayed by Italians in Prato, forms of transculturation have still developed among the youth and new generations, leading to the emergence of hybrid and hyphenated senses of belonging (Paciocco & Baldassar, 2017). What these studies have not addressed is how acts of transculturation led by migrant youth may have affected peers without migrant backgrounds and the social fabric of the city itself.

La Nostra Prato was designed to address this gap by working with multicultural youth of both migrant and non-migrant heritage, their teachers and migrant and local community organisations. Our aim was to develop a new approach that could empower youth to reimagine, remap and reclaim urban space as their own. Our intention was thus that of challenging traditional models of interaction between scholars and communities in order to develop nonlinear, more authentic and productive modes of cooperation and co-creation between academics and community members (Glick Schiller, 2011). To achieve these objectives, we designed a DST process that consisted of three basic steps:

• create a personal narrative;

• explore the city and take pictures, videos and audio recordings that reflect your narrative; and

• discuss the outputs and collate them into multiple stories that can be widely shared and experienced by accessing a digital platform and attending the exhibition.

To select participants for the workshops, we liaised with the Intercultural Working Group of the Network of Secondary Schools of the Province of Prato (Tavolo Intercultura della Rete degli Istituti Secondari di Secondo Grado della Provincia di Prato), a local network of highly involved and motivated high-school teachers who, in recent years, have run several successful initiatives with the multicultural youth of Prato (Rete Scuola Integra Culture, n.d.). The 48 students – aged between 16 and 18 – who took part in the workshops were thus selected by teachers from eight public high schools. Our criteria for the selection was to be inclusive and transformative. Among the participants, 30 were female and 18 male. Nine different lingua-cultural groups were represented, with participants speaking Italian, Mandarin, Arabic, Albanian, Romanian, Urdu, Panjabi, English and Spanish. Participation in the workshops was entirely voluntary and participants were free to opt-in and out, without undue pressure from teachers, parents or adults. Aside from the new skills and experiences gained, participation in the YITC workshops also awarded students with credits for the work-integrated learning programmes in the Italian education system (Percorsi trasversali per l’orientamento). This allowed us to work with participants every day for a full week and to ensure that they were rewarded for their work.

3.1 Participatory Map** and Digital Storytelling with Multicultural Youth

The activities of the creative workshops revolved around the collaborative creation of digital storytelling in the form of participatory maps, digital storytelling, photovoice, interactive installations and a pop-up exhibition. This approach engages with the diverse skills that each co-creator brought to the workshops, with the aim of map**, highlighting and appreciating diversity in the daily life and encounters of young people. Our focus on diversity was also reflected in the transdisciplinary and transnational composition of the research team, which brought together researchers, artists, graphic designers and professional consultants to expose participants to different perspectives, different ways of seeing things, different ways of saying things and different ways of facilitating. The young co-creators who joined us thus had to learn how to adapt and react to this diversity and how to tune their way of expressing themselves in relation to it. During the workshops, participants were systematically exposed to cycles that alternatively fuel convergent and divergent thinking (Frich et al., 2021). Techniques for divergent thinking pushed participants to produce multiple ideas and to explore different directions. Techniques for convergent thinking invited them, instead, to come back together on the same creative trajectory. Going through multiple cycles of divergent and convergent thinking over the 5 days of the workshops made the participants realise that they can welcome different ideas and creative outputs, working with them to produce rich and satisfactory outcomes. This co-creative process emerged by combining the contributions of all the participants into a final pop-up exhibition and a digital storytelling experience.

A week before the start of the workshop we conducted introductory sessions with smaller groups of participants in their own high schools. Spending time with the students before the start of the intensive workshops was a crucial component of our methodology, allowing us to better understand each participant’s skills, aims and hopes and to incorporate them into the final experience. In order to do so, we organised a participatory map** exercise with each group, to learn more about their stories and how they experience the city at a day-to-day level. This was followed by a media training session, where students were introduced to the technical aspects of DST. Questionnaires prepared by the research team were then distributed to collect initial data on the languages spoken by each participant, on their skills and on their own aims for the workshops.

Day 1 of the workshops was dedicated to participatory map** activities, with the objective of working with students to learn more about how they experience the city through their senses, how they relate to its multicultural landscape and what they would like to see changed. For this exercise, participants were divided into five groups of around 10 members each. Using printed maps of Prato, we first worked together to identify patterns of movement across the city, exploring personal relations to specific areas of it and discussing how participants move across transcultural areas and whether or not they perceive differences between various parts of Prato. The second part of the exercise was conducted collaboratively on larger maps of the city and focused on building sensorial maps of Prato’s multilingual and multicultural landscape (see Fig. 13.1). The discussion unfolded in free form and was driven by questions such as “Where do you hear music in other languages?” or “Where do you hear/see different languages?”. Finally, we focused on the connections that participants might feel with places outside their own city, their desires to add to or remove elements from it and the fascination that they might have for other countries, regions and cities. In doing so we explored dimensions of belonging, transculturality and the reclamation of space that are linked to aspects like memories, aspirations, desires and cultural influences through various media forms.

Fig. 13.1

One of the maps produced by participants during the workshops in which they discussed and mapped the sounds of their city

The next 2 days were dedicated to the creative missions of the workshops and saw participants working in smaller groups – designed to ensure a good range of diversity of heritage, language and gender – to explore the city and to capture images, stories and short videos. The first mission was dedicated to a sensorial exploration of Prato’s multicultural landscape and encouraged participants to experiment with new ways of moving, feeling, reading and interpreting Prato. Different parts of the city were assigned to each group and they were asked to focus on aspects such as signs and billboards in different languages, food that they never eat, sounds that make them happy and smells which take them elsewhere or which, instead, bring them back home. The mobile app developed for the project allowed them to quickly record images, videos and sound clips in each location of their choosing. Through this sensorial exploration of the city, the students discovered unexpected places such as a Buddhist temple or an Arabic cultural centre. At times they were welcomed, other times looked upon with suspicion. They tasted new food and drinks, became excited about traditional wedding dresses and reflected on the rise of a global culture within their own town. An interesting aspect that emerged from this mission is how, within each group, participants led their peers to the discovery of places that were familiar to them but not to others, fostering a process of transcultural leadership and exchange that greatly increased their confidence (see Fig. 13.2).

Fig. 13.2

Participants explore the city through their senses during the first mission

The second mission was dedicated to the creation of an emotional map of the city (see Fig. 13.3). We asked students to work on rage, disgust, sadness, joy, surprise and fear and to reflect on which places in Prato made them feel this way, whether they felt like they belonged to each place selected and if they felt that they could transform them through their own intervention. Each group was asked to create a brief story for each emotion, based on a personal memory. Creating a storyboard, they started to visualise their emotions. They then set out to capture pictures or videos to represent the place and the emotion they associate with it. The personal memories were recorded as separate audio files, transcribed as a text file and geo-localised using the software we developed for the workshops. What emerged from this mission was a complex, rich and, at times contradictory, representation of Prato. Locations like the Serraglio train station and its adjoining basketball pitch elicited contrasting emotions of disgust – for its state of decay – and surprise. As one participant put it: “The playground of the Serraglio train station surprised me because kids and adults, all different from each other, meet, play and chat together. All different, all welcome”.¹

Fig. 13.3

Surprise, joy and fear in three digital stories produced by participants

By exploring the city together, students were able to share personal memories and emotions, reflecting on their relationship with the city, their own role as part of the community and their ability to bring about social change. In one instance, a group of young girls chose to take a group picture in a location that elicited fear for one of them, accompanying it with the tag “The strength of women removes fear”. In another, participants approached the city’s most famous landmark – the Emperor’s castle– but focused their attention on the long queue in front of Caritas, a local relief organisation located behind it. As one of the participants wrote:

At the back of the castle, one finds Caritas – a relief organisation – and needy people of all ages, religions and ethnicities queue up for a hot meal and clothes. Some people sleep on dank grass, covered only by a threadbare blanket. For all things there’s two sides of the coin and it’s disgusting to choose to see only one.²

All their contributions manifested a profound desire to be part of the community, to embrace its cultural and linguistic complexity, and to have an impact on the future of their city.

3.2 Reclaiming Transcultural Space Through a Temporary Exhibition

The final 2 days of the workshop were dedicated to the organisation of a one-night pop-up exhibition, featuring a selection of the works which the students had produced in the previous days. Public exhibitions of creative work produced during participatory-action research are a critical component in reclaiming a public space of self-expression, allowing participants to engage with policymakers, families, friends, teachers and the general public (Halsall & Forneris, 2016). The event was entirely organised and run by the workshop participants, who divided themselves into different groups according to their interests and skills. The communication team worked with one member of the research group to set up the social media communication strategy, write and disseminate the official media release and reach out to local media and radio stations to advertise the exhibition. The press release which they produced highlights how they framed the organisation of the exhibition as an activist reclamation of space, staking an ownership claim on the transcultural urban environment they live in and on its futures:

The reasons why we decided to join the project are numerous. With this work, we wanted to take back Prato, not just in a physical sense but also in a moral sense, through our own perspectives and imagination. We are the youth and Prato will be ours in the future, so we have a right to express ourselves because we exist. Often no one asks for our opinions, except in instances like the “Fridays for Future” rallies. This is why we worked together and on equal ground, learning not to be strangers in our own city.³

The design team led the visual creation of postcards, flyers, promotional materials and multilingual information plaques in Italian, English and Mandarin for the exhibition (see Fig. 13.4). Teams of curators were then put in charge of selecting the creative outputs for the exhibition. One was tasked with selecting images and stories and decided to showcase them in sections by topics, creating titles and descriptions for each. It was in this instance that participants decided to add self-portraits into the exhibition space, including them in a section which they named “Us”. Another was in charge of transforming the videos and audio recordings into a multi-screen video installation, for which they selected materials, edited them alongside one member of the research team and took care of the technical installation. The map** team decided to exhibit the participatory maps produced during the workshops, accompanying them with data visualisations that could guide visitors through each of the questions explored. Another team focused on producing interactive installations where the public could actively engage in a process of participatory map** using a selection of the topics explored in the workshops. Visitors were invited to define what Prato is for them by adding words to a multilingual word-cloud that was posted on a wall and to share what they wish to add to and remove from their city on two large-scale printed maps. Finally, a group of participants organised a performance in multiple languages that opened the exhibition and welcomed everyone into the space that they set up together.

Fig. 13.4

Postcard produced by participants to represent the many languages of Prato and advertise the exhibition

The exhibition launched on 5 October 2019, with a group of young creators filling the exhibition space with voices in different languages, all speaking at the same time and over each other, as three of them took centre stage to welcome visitors to their reclaimed space. This polylingual performance dramatically attracted the audience’s attention and, at the same time, served to demonstrate that individuals can and do “inhabit” more than one linguistic home. Perhaps more importantly and in line with Welsch’s (1999) understanding of transculturality, this opening performance showcased how the choice of the linguistic home people wish to inhabit at any given moment supports individual decisions regarding multiple forms of belonging. In this instance, the plurality and choice of languages represent constitutive elements in the narrative practices of these youths, acting as markers of the composite and complex nature of both individual and cultural identities.

As a creative intervention where the private reimagining of Prato performed by each participant was made public, the exhibition itself created a space where the daily transcultural exchange across the different cultures and languages that characterise Prato was made visible and tangible (see Fig. 13.5). For a few hours, 200 people, including families and friends, teachers, city councillors, the mayor and members of the general public became part of a city re-imagined by its transcultural youth. It was in this instance that we first noticed the impact of the work conducted over the course of a week, as the workshop participants spontaneously organised guided tours of the exhibition, leading groups of people across the different sections and explaining their own work. As we observed, the attendees were quick to engage with the new space of transculturation created by the students. The evaluation board that people were invited to fill in at the end of the exhibition indicated a very high level of appreciation for all works exhibited – and the interactive creative works, in particular, were the most appreciated. “Prato is…” – the interactive installation where the public was invited to add a single word on a wall to express what the city represents for them – saw a total of over 70 interactions in nine different languages. Many people used words that connect with the transcultural space of interaction created by the workshop participants. Prato was described in the words of the public as a space of “entanglement”, “contamination”, “voices”, “entropy” and “hospitality”. Many people also chose to contrast negative connotations such as “dirt”, “fear” and “bad smell” by overlaying them with words such as “future”, “home”, and “hope”. Besides the interaction with the work exhibited, we also noticed how the exhibition space was quickly transformed into a space for transcultural socialisation thanks to the active role played by workshop participants in bringing friends, families and the general public together and in introducing people from different societal groups to each other.

Fig. 13.5

Students involved in the La Nostra Prato project launch of the pop-up exhibition at Officina Giovani, Prato, Italy, 5 October 2019

The feedback gathered from students confirms that La Nostra Prato was, for many, a transformative experience: allowing them not only to discover new parts of their city and form friendships with peers from different cultural and linguistic backgrounds but also to reclaim a creative and productive space for self-representation and to gain confidence in their own voices and transcultural leadership skills. As they put it:

I have learned that, even if you are young, you can have your voice heard if you believe in it.

This experience enriched me because I encountered many other cultures. I have learned to observe my city from other points of view and I discovered new places in areas that I cross daily.

I have learned that we take many things for granted. We often stop at the surface and do not truly engage with what surrounds us.

Thanks to this project, I worked with other young people and shared my emotions with them. I am proud of the work we did. It was worth it.

I have learned to observe more carefully the places that surround me and to pay attention to details that I often miss in my daily life. I have also learned that unity is strength.⁴

The organisation of the exhibition and the creative missions were the most valued components of the whole experience for most of the participants involved. The leadership skills that students developed over the course of the workshop facilitated the dissemination of project results in the weeks and months following the end of the project. A group of participants was invited to discuss the project and its outcomes on a local radio programme and three of them joined the research team for the online public launch of the project’s website in March 2021.

4 Transcultural Futures: Transforming a Participatory-Action Workshop into an Interactive Storytelling Experience

One of the cornerstones of our methodology is the combination of digital and interaction design, informed by the disciplines of the humanities, to produce striking digital outputs that are highly original and potentially impactful. To achieve broader visibility for the participants’ creative work at a national and international level, we transformed the geo-localised stories, photographs, videos and testimonies produced during the workshops into an interactive digital storytelling experience that provides an original interpretation of Prato from the many perspectives of its multicultural youth. The La Nostra Prato online experience is available in English and in Italian and was designed to allow users to step through the multicultural history of Prato across the years, to experience the city through the senses, emotions and hopes of the 48 young creators who joined us during the workshops and to engage with the urban reality they live in, learning how they imagine a different and better future for their city (see Fig. 13.6).

Fig. 13.6

The landing page of the digital storytelling experience

La Nostra Prato is structured in three modules: Past, 2019 and Futures. The first section of the experience takes users on a journey from the Middle Ages to the present, showcasing how the city of Prato has become what it is today through seven centuries of exchange of ideas, goods, entrepreneurs and workers. It combines historical, quantitative, demographic and qualitative data collected in preparation for the workshops using interactive maps that visualise the complex transnational network that connects Prato to the rest of the world, showcasing how encounters between different peoples, cultures and languages increase people’s ability to create, produce, communicate and share. The second module is meant to introduce users to Prato through the senses and emotions of its multicultural youth, showcasing how their stories, perspectives and creativity can provide an even richer portrait of the city. A selection of the videos produced by participants is used to introduce the process and methodology that guided their urban exploration. The experience then moves to an interactive media grid that features a selection of the stories and images produced during the workshops, delving deeper into the sensorial and emotional landscapes of Prato’s multicultural youth and celebrating the agency and leadership of participants in reclaiming urban space as their own (see Fig. 13.7).

Fig. 13.7

The Media Grid featuring the images and stories created by workshop participants

The last section of La Nostra Prato is dedicated to how multicultural youth can have an impact on their city, working together to have their voices heard and to imagine new futures. It presents the vision for the future of Prato of participants across four postcards (for an example, see Fig. 13.8). Each one introduces different aspects of their plans for the city, outlining the different futures of ‘their Prato’. Through their work, Prato was re-imagined as an international creative hub, with participants advocating – amongst other things – for a new public library near the Buddhist temple, an International House of Comics in the Macrolotto Zero district and a polyfunctional centre where they could share knowledge about nature, culture, the arts and sport. Sustainability and connectedness were also of pivotal importance for participants, with requests for a conservation area for flora and fauna accompanying demands for a high-speed tram line connecting Prato to nearby airports. Access to new countries was accompanied by requests for more exchange between the different cultures and languages that call Prato home. Participants would love to create ta**e restaurants where they could share the food they eat at home with the rest of the city, karaoke bars in the city centre and gyms where they can learn to become cheerleaders. Interestingly enough, these requests for further processes of transculturation went hand in hand with others that advocated for a more globalised city, where international fast-food chains and shop** centres co-exist with local businesses. Finally, their city was re-imagined as a space that fosters co-creative processes of exchange and growth, with numerous requests for more spaces and cultural centres where newcomers to Prato can get together and know each other, music clubs, discotheques, queer bars, a stadium for live music, theatres and a museum of cinema, as well as empty public spaces to be re-invented together. This last point is perhaps one of the most interesting ones, showcasing how the transcultural leadership skills that participants fostered over the course of the week are geared towards a future in which they see themselves working alongside others to change the space they live in.

Fig. 13.8

Prato’s castle is reimagined as a summer club in one of the postcards designed by the students

We believe that bridging the gaps between research, creative practices, entrepreneurship, education and civic engagement requires producing results that can be used for educational purposes and a methodology that can freely and easily be adopted and adapted by different stakeholders. For this reason, we produced a short documentary that follows us during the week of workshops and two different sets of educational guidelines that accompany the interactive storytelling experience. The first is a teacher’s guide that presents guidelines on how to use the digital storytelling experience through a series of in-class activities tailored for students from the age of 14 onwards (Dutto et al., 2020a). In order to facilitate the replication of the workshops across schools, other educational contexts and other cities, we have also developed a set of guidelines that reconstruct the 5 days of workshops, reflecting on what we learned as a research team and on the co-creative exploration of Prato that we experienced together with the participants (Dutto et al., 2020b).

5 Conclusions

We invited three of the participants from the La Nostra Prato project to the website launch event in March 2021 to discuss their passion for social change and share how participating in the project was, for them, a transformative experience. Maria, who is of Albanian heritage, noted how she felt an increased sense of self-confidence, fostered by the processes of transcultural exchange with other participants and by a recognition of her own sense of agency in reclaiming what she identifies as ‘new spaces of respect’, where difference and diversity can be experienced together. Bilal, whose family is originally from Pakistan, stressed how experiencing the city through the eyes and emotions of fellow young people from other cultural and linguistic backgrounds has allowed him to notice new details and recognise the richness and complexity of his hometown. The biggest satisfaction for Elisa, who is of Egyptian heritage, was getting out of her comfort zone, challenging herself, interacting freely with the research team and with her peers and working together to reclaim a space of her own through the exhibition. Beyond their individual experiences, they all noted that there were many lessons to be learnt from this kind of participatory action project that would benefit other young people seeking to make a positive impact in their communities. Not least that the process of creating their own multilayered narratives enhanced their respect for and valuing of diversity.

Active participation, dialogue and openness to change were all critical components of our approach. The methodology discussed in this chapter was fine-tuned and adjusted as the intensive workshop progressed, thanks to the contributions of the 48 co-creators who joined us. An adaptability to different settings and an interest in develo** localised creative interventions based on each co-creator’s skill set and interests are critical components of the strategy that we are aiming to pursue with Youth in the City in the future. Our objective is to continue testing, adapting and fine-tuning the model of participatory creative interventions for social change by develo** new projects in superdiverse cities across the world. Some key questions may only be answered once a few more projects have been developed, including the extent to which this kind of project can effectively influence dominant narratives around migration and social cohesion and how the different local and national contexts in which the projects take place might influence actual outcomes. Nevertheless, this particular experience has shown that there is value in the process itself and that the impact of such a project may be difficult to quantify without considering it as just one iteration of the broader research initiative – and, perhaps more importantly, as just one expression of a constellation of cultural and educational projects which, over time and across different geographical and social spaces, may encourage young people to become leaders for social change. They will be the real and impactful agents of any meaningful social and cultural transformation.