Living Heritage and Community Participation

Explore what encourages or prevents residents from taking an active role in local cultural life. Develop students’ skills in facilitation, stakeholder mapping and collaborative problem-solving. Co-design a small heritage initiative with residents that gives younger people, long-time residents and newcomers meaningful roles in community life.

How might a Kaunas District community use its living heritage to bring generations together, involve more residents and strengthen a shared sense of belonging?

In this three-day, on-site Change Maker Ambassador Programme, students from ACE²-EU partner universities will work with a Kaunas District community to explore how stories, songs and memories of places can become the starting point for activities residents want to lead. Samylai offers a proposed case through the singing tradition of villages flooded when the Kaunas Reservoir was created. Working with residents and cultural practitioners, students will identify barriers to participation and design one activity around a priority agreed with the community.

The teams might prototype an intergenerational storytelling walk, a map linking places to residents’ memories, or a gathering that brings younger and older residents together around local songs. At the end, residents will review the prototype and help decide whether and how it could be tested locally.

• Samylai Cultural Centre
• Representatives of the Samylai community and local tradition bearers, such as members of the Samylų folklore ensemble.

Registration is done by email. To register, please send an email to the programme coordinators: kamile.karvelyte@lik.tech, gitana.vyciene@lik.tech.

Participants receive a certificate worth 1 ECTS.

Kamilė Karvelytė, e-mail: kamile.karvelyte@lik.tech

Gitana Vyčienė, e-mail: gitana.vyciene@lik.tech