INK of Freedom
Ink of Freedom is a funded project through the Erasmus+ program, and has 3 organisations involved: DCTR (Portugal), Esplai (Spain) and YC Epirus (Greece). The project aims to empower and stimulate young people to find innovative ways of participating in EU democratic life, by strengthening young people’s sense of belonging and understanding of EU values.
This project also aims to increase the perception of the fragility of the democracy in which we live, evident in the resurgence of nationalist and extremist rhetoric, intolerance and xenophobia, that has systematically gained, over the last few years and in electoral processes within the European space, a growing number of supporters. As attentive citizens involved in the search for answers to Europe's current and future challenges, we want to develop actions that stimulate the ability to reinforce people's participation in the decision-making processes of their countries.
The similarities we found between dictatorial regimes in Portugal, Spain and Greece, both in the characteristics of the regimes and in the moment in history in which they occurred, led to this Consortium and the project. These similarities, and how the processes of democratic liberation triumphed, are a common basis that led us to understand that this approach will be an interesting way of motivating young people to want to know better how things happened and what difficulties and restrictions existed before, comparing past and present to build the future they want to see.
Having this in mind, Ink of Freedom has 3 main blocks of activities:
#1 Research
#2 Creative Process, that will use the data obtained in the block #1
#3 European Route App, which will use the data and results obtained both in blocks #1 and #2
During the research phase, each partner organisation will analyse data obtained from intergenerational focus groups, from interviews of people who have lived, or who's immediate relatives have lived through the dictatorship period, and from letters exchanged between individuals during the dictatorship period.
The results of the research will be used by artists and young people, in order to create artistic performances inspired by the findings. Local performances will be shown in the regions of where the young people and organisations are located in, as well, the groups of young people will travel to each other to perform in each other's cities.
Finally, the visual materials, such as the letters, and videos from the performances, along information obtained during the research phase, will be used to create the European Route App, where users will be able to access the contents and use VR functions to visit both historic and performance locations and see relevant content at the locations.
Below, you can read news and updates of the project!
News of the INK of Freedom project
First transnational meeting in Madrid, Spain
In Castelló, Spain, representatives of the three partner organisations met for the first time face-to-face, from June 25 to 26, 2024. Partners had already met online to define the project management principles, so we used this Transnational Meeting in Spain to mostly focus on the upcoming Work Packages and activities, that will be focused on research in each country about the resistance to dictatorship. In this meeting we also had the opportunity to visit an anti-aircraft shelter in Castelló, used during th Civil War in Spain, which helped us to better understand the reality in the country at that time.
Research Results
For the first several months of the project, researchers of the partner organisations worked on an extensive research about the dictatorship periods in their countries (Greece, Portugal, and Spain). The research included a short desk-research about the historic period, and extensive qualitative research phases: focus groups, interviews, and analysis of historic letters.
People of 3 generations participated in the focus groups, providing that stories of the time were shared, both from first-hand experiences and heard from the closest relatives. In the interviews, older generations participated - mostly people who experienced the dictatorship periods. And many historic letters sent during the oppression times were analysed, gathered from personal, private, and public archives.
The research results are going to be used by artistic youth teams of each organisation, while working on the creative process stage of this project. The team of Greece will be preparing a performance inspired/based on the Portuguese report, the Portuguese youth team will be working on the Spanish report, and the Spanish team will be creating a performance inspired by the Greek research report. The performances will be prepared during the autumn of 2025, and will be shown as follows: December 2025 in Portugal, February 2026 in Greece, April 2026 in Spain, and also several times during January-May 2025 they will be shown locally in each country. The performances will not be announced - they will be pop-up street performances!
Here, we publish the research results, which can be downloaded and used with a reference. Anyone who would like to comment or share anything that might be worth noting in regard to the research is very welcome to contact us.
THE GREEK RESEARCH RESULTS:
THE PORTUGUESE RESEARCH RESULTS:
Transnational Meeting in Aveiro, Portugal
Representatives of the INK of Freedom project met in Aveiro, Portugal, 14th-25th of April 2025 to discuss and plan the project activity flow. Reflection on the research results promoted brainstorming and preparation for the creative part of the project, which is the next step. The artistic work leaders discussed the concept of the creative work deeper, made initial decisions on the training and ways of work.
Moreover, it was significant that the transnational partners meeting took place during the 25th of April, which is the Freedom Day of Portugal, otherwise known as the Carnation Revolution that ended the dictatorship in Portugal in 1974. We took a special note of that and joined the celebration with gifted carnations!
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