The year 2018 has been named the European Year of Cultural Heritage with the slogan “Our heritage: where the past meets the future”. The main motivation of this project is based on this. It aims to create cultural and entrepreneurial opportunities for the young people, by exploring the popular intangible cultures, mainly oral traditions and folk cultures, like storytelling, games, songs, dances and festivals of the past. 

This is the area where AESOP will focus on:

– From an entrepreneurial point of view, the project will explore ways and means of valorising the local traditional elements of culture from the part of young people in order to make them more appealing to the public andto make them contribute to the touristic, cultural and educational development.

– From a cultural point of view, it will give us the opportunity to work with young people with artistic background in storytelling and theatre with the aim to build their capacity and bring together to life tales originating from different parts of the world that however have many elements in common.

The promotion of intangible cultural heritage and oral tradition is a priority both in the Partner countries that participate in the project and the European countries. Vietnam and Brazil have very important Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH) assets which however have a very small impact on the local development. In Spain and in Greece youth unemployment is very high and ICH represents a great potential both to reduce youth unemployment and to contribute to the local development.