Rural Europe on the move English_chap7_13 | Page 65

The Energy of youth
Stereotypes lost
The Dronten youth gathering
ART SESSIONS
challenged the stereotype that rural
regions are boring, backward or During Forum Synergies’ workshops we put an emphasis on
undesirable. According to Eurostat, inclusive and enabling processes, and try to encourage participants
around 4,4% (or 10 million people) of to experience and express themselves as human beings with a
those employed in the EU-28 worked multitude of dimensions - emotional, intellectual, spiritual - and
in agriculture in 2015. Of these, almost to communicate from heart-to-heart. During art sessions, there is
three quarters worked in just seven space for creative chaos, which often frees the mind for creative
countries. Rural areas account for 28% problem-solving too. Objects and symbols collected during field
of the European population. These visits play an important role in the artistic process. In Dronten, we
areas are frequently those with the were guided by Land artist Irma Horstman, who invited us into
lowest average income, highest rate the woods, where all kinds of natural material was rearranged to
of unemployment and poorest access symbolic art works, which were then connected between each
to public services. “The general opinion other. Building bridges on dry land, as it were.
seems to be that only the ‘losers’ stay in
their home villages,” one respondent to
the European Rural Youth Parliament
told me, “Village life is seen as frequently stereotyped as a non- which I have been involved for the
outdated and anti-progressive.” But is cultural space, whereas art and past seven years, operates. We are
that still true today? culture are reserved for the city reframing rural areas as exciting,
dwellers. This ignores how much desirable places for working, living
inspiring work is being produced and leisure. We want to prove that
in our countryside. Art and playful young people can do much more
encounters have become important than just preserving nature or work
ingredients of Forum Synergies in the traditional sectors of farming,
events. It is in this context that the fishing and forestry. A new rural
Latvian Rural Forum (LRF), with paradigm with changes that we have
“The general opinion
seems to be that only
the ‘losers’ stay in their
home villages.”
The art of being
rooted
Forum Synergies has always
been interested in the multiple ways
people engage with and understand
rural life. Artistic practice, whether
visual, musical or movement-based,
is one way of knowing about the
rural world. It is also a key way to
make rural issues understandable to
lay-people or to explore the different
ways different people engage with
such issues. The rural world is also
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