“Cultural Heritage and Identities of Europe's Future” (CHIEF), a project carried out by a UPF research team, has recently obtained the Enric Renau i Permanyer Mention in the framework of the fourteenth edition of the Educaweb Awards for Academic and Professional Guidance, which were delivered on 2 December during an online event (the intervention by Mariona Ferrer, presenting the project, is at minute 37:26 of the video).

During the virtual event, Sílvia Amblàs, director of D'EP Institut, announced the decision of the Mention, awarded to the CHIEF project, of which the jury highlighted “the desire to incorporate a clearly propositive approach through conclusions that bring about a paradigm shift in the relationship between culture and education”.

Mariona Ferrer: “The project has shown that we need to expand our concept of culture and young people’s participation in culture to recognize their own cultural practices from a more inclusive perspective"

In Spain, the CHIEF project has been coordinated by Mariona Ferrer Fons, a researcher with the UPF Department of Political and Social Sciences and a member of the Youth, Society and Communication Research Group (JOVIS.com). It is part of a European project with the participation of a dozen institutions, funded by the European Commission, coordinated by Aston University (UK) under the Horizon 2020 programme, and which took place between 2018 and 2021.

The jury highlighted CHIEF’s innovative nature and social impact

The award jury consisted of Xavier Riudor, director of the technical office of the CTESC and technical secretary of the Mention; Armand Giménez, representing the Association of Political Science and Sociology Professionals of Catalonia, and Carles Duarte, an expert in the field of culture (in addition to non-voting members D'EP Institut and Educaweb). Among the reasons for recognizing the CHIEF-UPF project, the jury highlighted its innovative approach and methodological diversity in tackling the object of study; the multiplicity of outputs derived from the project and the effort to identify and generate impacts through research.

The Enric Renau i Permanyer Mention, convened by D’EP Institut, the Association of Political Science and Sociology Professionals of Catalonia and Educaweb, seeks to recognize applied social research with the aim of helping to highlight initiatives committed to promoting the transformation of the world of education, training and work. This year, coinciding with Joan Triadú year, the ninth edition of the Mention focused on applied research into culture and the field of education, training and work.

Research that stresses the need to expand the concept of culture and cultural participation

The main goal of the “Cultural Heritage and Identities of Europe’s Future” (CHIEF) project is to understand the mechanisms of young people’s cultural learning through various areas of education and socialization. The analysis, which combines quantitative and qualitative methods, focuses on the influence of the family, formal and non-formal education and the informal practices of young people in Catalonia.

According to Mariona Ferrer, some of the main conclusions of the study carried out by the UPF team are “the importance of non-formal and informal areas in young people’s learning of culture; the impact of new technologies through video games and social media, an area in which we have seen significant gender differences; and the need to expand our concept of culture and cultural participation by young people to recognize their own cultural practices from a more inclusive perspective”.

During the project, the UPF team has worked with non-formal organizations and young people who had been the subject of research, to then carry out various cultural projects with them, such as training workshops on mural art, graffiti and video; conferences on educational practices with socially excluded young immigrants, and a participatory project with agents and organizations in the fields of youth, culture and education in Catalonia.