🇮🇹 "Arte Senza Confini" / 25.09-03.10.2025 - Filadelfia (VV), Calabria, Italy - 2025-1-IT03-KA152-YOU-000297952
- Arte Diem Calabria
- Jul 27, 2025
- 19 min read
Updated: Aug 9
Thirty-seven people. Six countries. One small stone village in the hills of Calabria, halfway between the mountains and the sea.
For nine days at the end of September 2025, Filadelfia - a quiet borgo in the province of Vibo Valentia - became a recording studio, a theatre, an inclusaive safe space, a cinema and a meeting point for young people from Italy, Greece, Spain, North Macedonia, Bulgaria and Romania.
They came without needing to be artists. That was the whole point.
Arte Senza Confini started from a simple observation. Too many young people - especially those from rural and inner areas, from families under economic pressure, or currently outside education, employment and training - have very few places where they can express themselves and be recognised for it. When those places are missing, isolation grows. And isolation is where far worse things begin.
So we asked a question. What happens if you give thirty young Europeans paint, cameras, microphones, masks, a village that welcomes them, and one week to find out who they are?
This is the long answer.
📌 Our Project Overview
Project title | Arte Senza Confini - Art Without Borders |
Programme | Erasmus+ · Key Action 1 · Youth Exchange (KA152-YOU) |
Project code | 2025-1-IT03-KA152-YOU-000297952 |
National Agency | Agenzia Italiana per la Gioventù |
Dates | Arrival 25 September · Activities 26 September - 2 October · Departure 3 October 2025 |
Duration | 7 activity days + 2 travel days |
Venue | Residenza Antico Borgo, Filadelfia (VV), Calabria, Italy |
Travel hub | Lamezia Terme airport and railway station |
Participants | 30 young people, mostly aged 18-25 · 6 group leaders · 1 Facilitator |
Fewer opportunities | 16 of the young participants |
Countries | 🇮🇹 Italy · 🇬🇷 Greece · 🇪🇸 Spain · 🇲🇰 North Macedonia · 🇧🇬 Bulgaria · 🇷🇴 Romania |
Priorities | Digital skills and competences · Inclusion of marginalised young people · Preventing radicalisation |
Host coordinators | Rocco Burdino · Emanuel Caristi |
🎯 What we set out to do
The objectives stayed on the wall for the whole week, where everyone could see them:
📈 Foster personal growth, and help participants discover talents, strengths and possible future paths through art
🤝 Strengthen soft skills through collaborative artistic activities
🧩 Improve teamwork and social skills in mixed international groups
💻 Develop digital skills and media literacy - photography, video, editing, content creation, podcasting
🌍 Share traditions and cultures, and value local heritage through artistic expression
💖 Build empathy and connection between peers from very different backgrounds
🛡️ Counter isolation and the risks of radicalisation by creating a space where difficult things can be said out loud
♻️ Promote active citizenship, sustainability and the Sustainable Development Goals
🎓 Show what Erasmus+ actually is - its opportunities, and the tools that make learning visible, starting with Youthpass
📮 Before the Youth Exchange
Every participant received a full digital infopack: programme, how to reach Filadelfia, what to pack, emergency contacts, insurance requirements, house rules, and a basic Italian phrasebook. Travel was reimbursed within the Erasmus+ distance bands, and every participant had to arrive with a European Health Insurance Card or private travel insurance. Dietary needs, allergies and medical requirements were collected in advance so the kitchen and the team could plan.
Selection was run by each partner organisation in its own countryand the criteria were deliberately not artistic: motivation, openness, interest in visual and digital expression, and willingness to run follow-up activities at home. No previous artistic experience was required. English was the working language, and fluency was never a condition of participation.
Each national team also arrived with homework:
🎪 an intercultural evening to present - food, drinks, music, traditional games
⚡ a morning energizer to lead
📖 a myth or legend from their own country, researched and ready to be staged
Group leaders held online preparatory meetings with their teams to map expectations, identify barriers to participation, agree personal and group objectives, and go through the practical and safety information and naturally the programme to lead.
🌳 Day 1 - Friday 26 September · Getting to know each other
✉️ The envelopes on the wall
The first full day was about building the ground everything else would stand on.
We started with breakfast and an energizer, then names - properly, not the polite half-version. Participants photographed each other and decorated personal envelopes, which went up on the wall and stayed there for the whole week.
That wall turned out to matter more than we expected. It became the backdrop of half the photographs taken during the exchange, and the mechanism for Secret Friend: everyone drew a name and spent the week quietly looking after that person - small gifts, notes slipped into the envelope - without ever revealing who they were.
🌳 My Forest, Our Forest
Then came a trust activity that the participants themselves described best, in the daily report they wrote that same evening:
"We did the forest game where we could feel like we can count on each other, so we can feel safe."
Two lines. But they contain the entire purpose of day one.
🍝 Italian and Greek night
The day closed with the first Intercultural Night. Italy and Greece presented their countries through food, drinks, music, geography and traditional games - prepared by the national teams themselves, not by the organisers.
🎬 Watch the day
🗺️ Day 2 - Saturday 27 September · The village, and everyone in it
This was the day the project left the building.
🔍 The scavenger hunt
After two energizers and the handing out of the Arte Diem Calabria project T-shirts, the group split into five mixed teams of six - deliberately mixed, so that no team was a national team. Each team took a name: Cipolla, Gelato, Peperoncino, Pizza Team, Spaghetti. Then they went out into Filadelfia with a list.
The tasks were not sightseeing. Every one of them required talking to strangers:
🗣️ Learn three phrases in Calabrese dialect - and teach one from your own language
💃 Build a team dance using steps from each of your cultures
🎶 Find a local person and sing an Italian song together
🏛️ Find three artistic or cultural spots and discover what they mean
🎬 Record a local young person shouting "Arte Diem Calabria!"
🎨 Answer in a few words - "Art for me is…" - then find two residents willing to answer the same question
📸 Find a beautiful spot and take a creative team photo
And Filadelfia answered.
🗣️ What the Residents of Filadelfia said
The clips the teams brought back are, honestly, among the best things this project produced. Residents taught dialect phrases and corrected the pronunciation until it was right. They sang Calabrisella mia - a traditional Calabrian folk song - along with L'italiano, Nel blu dipinto di blu and Sarà perché ti amo, with a group of twenty-somethings they had met four minutes earlier.
And when asked what art meant to them, they did not brush the question off. One resident said this:
"For me, art is a tool - something that should be reactivated so that craftsmanship comes back to life in this town. Because once there were master craftswomen with their apprentices, carpenters with their apprentices. Now it's been lost. Little by little we should bring all these crafts back, because they're useful for the town too."
Nobody prompted that. A man in a small inner-Calabrian village connected art to the intergenerational transmission of craft, and to what a community loses when that chain breaks. It was the most sophisticated thing anyone said about heritage all week - and it came from outside the project.
Others were shorter and just as good:
"For me art is something stronger than my voice."
"Art is the beauty you find every day. The small things."
"Every image has a meaning. It has to be read, it has to be interpreted."
"Art for me is freedom in expression. Any way that you can express yourself using creativity. It's being me."
🎓 Erasmus+ and Youthpass
Back at the venue, a dedicated session explained what the Erasmus+ programme actually offers young people - mobility, training, volunteering, funding for their own ideas - and introduced Youthpass: what it is, how the eight key competences work, and how the week's learning would be recognised and written down at the end.
For a good number of the participants, this was the first time anyone had explained that a week like this leaves a certificate, and that the certificate is written by them, not for them.
🎨 Creative Canvas
The afternoon was the first proper artistic workshop: a collective canvas, painted together, on the themes that had emerged during the first two days. No brief about technique, no right answer. The canvas is one of the physical objects the project left behind.
💃 Spanish and Romanian night
The evening belonged to Spain and Romania - dancing, food, and a great deal of noise.
🎬 Watch the day
🎭 Day 3 - Sunday 28 September · The stories that shaped us
If day two went outward, day three went inward.
🌊 The River of Life
It opened with The River of Life, framed by a line from Antonio Machado:
"Pathmaker, there is no path - you make the path by walking. By walking, you make the path…"
Each participant drew their own life as a river. Where the bends and turns were, when the situation or the perspective changed. The rocks and boulders that fell in - obstacles, or moments that altered everything. Ages and dates marked along the flow. Times of pain, their own or other people's, that changed the direction of the water.
Then they shared them in pairs.
That is a considerable amount of trust to ask for on the third day of knowing someone. It worked because of the two days that came before it.
📖 Six countries, six myths
In the second part, each national team re-enacted a myth or legend from their own country, using whatever the venue could offer as props - towels, flowers, hats, a national flag worn as a costume.
🇮🇹 Romulus and Remus - the she-wolf, the twins, the founding of Rome, and a murder at the origin of an empire
🇷🇴 Manole the Builder - the master mason whose walls collapsed every night until he walled his own wife inside them
🇪🇸 The Lovers of Teruel - Isabel and Diego, kept apart by their families, found mummified side by side centuries later
🇬🇷 Ithaka - Homer's Odyssey read through Cavafy: "Ithaka was never the reward. The true treasure is the journey itself."
🇧🇬 The Samodivas - the magical women dancing barefoot in the meadow, and the shepherd who was never the same again
🇲🇰 Lake Dojran - Dojrana, who forgot the ninth lock on the sacred spring, and the valley that disappeared under the water
The participants' verdict on their own performances, from the daily report: "creative, emotional and funny."
💬 Building a story, one word at a time
After lunch, a group storytelling game: a story built word by word around the circle, then repeated with sound effects added, then acted out. Simple, and merciless - you cannot hide in a game where the story dies if you stop paying attention.
🎭 Masks, make-up and invented characters
In the afternoon the group made masks of imagined characters and wrote full profiles for them: name, age, origin, background story, traits.
What came out was a genuinely strange and wonderful gallery. Salvador Dalí and Pablo Picasso. Neytiri from Pandora and Ursula from the Cecaelian sea. A Calabrian magic butterfly, one day old, with the power to make people happy. King Baldwin of Jerusalem. A 25-year-old from a panel block in Sofia whose only hope is his AI girlfriend. An Aymara tribe member from the Andes who speaks only his own language. A famous tenor who lost his voice and has to choose between poverty and disappointing his public.
Then, in groups, participants connected their characters into stories and performed short theatre pieces - in full make-up and masks.
Ask a young person to describe themselves and you get a shrug. Ask them to invent a character and you learn a great deal.
✨ Bulgarian and Macedonian night
The day ended, in the participants' own words, "full of laughter and conversations."
🎬 Watch the day
🌍 Cultural discovery & Intercultural nights
The intercultural nights served as the vibrant heartbeat of our evenings, transforming simple gatherings into celebrations of shared identity where participants from Italy, Greece, Spain, North Macedonia, Bulgaria, and Romania bridged cultures through the spontaneous exchange of traditional food, music, dances, and games.
🌊 Day 4 - Monday 29 September · Tropea, Pizzo and the Coast of the Gods
🏖️ Tropea
The cliff-top city over the sea. Classic architecture, the monumental sanctuary of Santa Maria dell'Isola standing on its rock, the blue caves, the narrow roads of the old town, and the stretch of coastline that Calabrians call the Costa degli Dei - the Coast of the Gods.
A group photo from the balcony over the sea, then free exploration through the little streets.
Then the beach, which the participants recorded as the undisputed highlight of the day, "with many courageous explorers swimming around the 'island'."
🍦 Pizzo, and the tartufo
In the afternoon, Pizzo. The group photo happened "with the help of some kind strangers" - which is its own small lesson in what this project was about.
And then the tartufo di Pizzo: the town's famous chocolate and hazelnut ice-cream truffle, tried for the first time by almost everyone present.
"My favourite activity was the visit day to the cities of Tropea and Pizzo. I had the opportunity to see a lot of new places and to try the well-known traditional tartufo. It was so great."
🏘️ Community Day
The day was not only a trip. It was designed as a Community Day - the participants moving through two Calabrian towns as visitors who talk to people rather than tourists who photograph them.
🫂 Day 5 - Tuesday 30 September · The longest day
🫂 The hug circle
The morning began with two energizers and then something that several participants would later name as the single most memorable moment of the week.
Two circles were formed - a large one, and a small one inside it. Those in the outer circle closed their eyes. Those inside walked around and hugged whoever they chose, guided by prompts read out loud:
"Hug the person who makes you feel welcomed in the morning."
"I loved the hugging activity, because we have a real connection with the people - and also because I was really surprised about things I didn't know about myself. The people showed me my skills."
🌍 Dreamland - inventing a country
Then, Dreamland: Imagining Our Future Together. Five mixed teams designed their own countries from scratch. Values first, then laws, then rules - built with whatever was on the table: paper, beads, wool, clay, paint.
What they produced was not utopian decoration. The posters carry concrete civic proposals:
freedom of speech · citizenship education in schools · age restrictions on social media · rule of law · legislative protection for whistleblowers · measures to reduce inequality
And, written large and circled in the middle of one poster: "Say NO to radicalisation."
Thirty young people, handed complete freedom to invent a country, chose to legislate against radicalisation. That tells you something about what they walked in carrying.
🤫 The things we can't say
In the afternoon the group watched part of a documentary about love and how differently people understand it, then used visual cards to name feelings that are hard to put into words.
Then something quieter. Each person chose a word and an image representing something they could not talk about.
The words collected that afternoon are printed in the project booklet: pain, fear, guilt, shame, anxiety, embarrassment, failure, hesitation, conform, suppress.
The point was never to explain them. The point was that they could be seen and named without having to be explained.
🃏 The Conversation Cards
From the same session, participants wrote their own questions onto small cards:
Who are you when nobody is watching? · What was the main crossroad of your life? · What makes you feel loved? · What's your biggest regret? · When did you realise you grew up? · Tell three things you want to add to your daily life in 2026 · What are you most afraid of saying here?
🌅 Three fountains and a sunset
Those cards came back in the evening when the group walked up to a viewpoint above the village for the sunset, past Filadelfia's three fountains - one for love, one for hatred, one for forgetting. The legend says that whichever you drink from decides what you will feel the next time you come back.
Then karaoke, back at the venue.
🎬 Day 6 - Wednesday 1 October · The Video Lab
📋 The planning board
Before anyone picked up a camera, the themes went up on a board as sticky notes:
🤝 TRUST · 🧩 INCLUSION · 🎨 EXPRESSION · 🌍 DIVERSITY · 🏛️ HERITAGE · 🔗 CONNECTION 🔓 OPENNESS · 🎬 PROJECT VIDEO · 📢 RAISING AWARENESS VIDEO · 🗣️ TESTIMONIALS.
The group was divided into new working groups, each with a new group leader chosen from among the participants themselves and a specific deliverable. That rotation mattered more than it sounds: young people who had spent five days being guided spent the sixth day guiding.
Teams worked inside the venue and out in the town. They filmed, they interviewed each other, they edited on laptops - in CapCut, adding subtitles as they went.
🎙️ The podcasts, and the thing nobody planned
In a corner of the courtyard, with proper microphones on booms, headphones, an audio interface and a camera, they recorded podcasts.
Here is the part we did not design. The Greek team opened their episode by explaining their own format: they would answer questions drawn at random from the deck of Conversation Cards the group had written the day before, without knowing them in advance. An output of the project became the production tool for another output. Nobody instructed them to do that.
The Greek episode turned into something remarkable - a long, unhurried conversation about how art enters a life. One host told the story of being sixteen and seeing, by chance on television, that the Greek National Opera was staging Carmen. She asked her parents to take her. Afterwards she searched YouTube, found Maria Callas, and could not explain what happened when she heard that voice. From there: more operas, a public classical radio station, radio theatre, then real theatre. Through theatre, she said, she recognised an emotion she had never been able to name and had not known existed.
The Italian episode went somewhere else - families, expectations, and a question drawn from the deck:
"When you decided to do this project and told someone about it, what did they say? Did they support you, or did they ask what on earth you were going for?"
One answer came from a participant who had just come off the phone: their mother had asked them to send photos of the other projects available.
And this, on the method itself:
"I think the most beautiful thing we did during the activities is that we used art as expression. But it's thanks to the expression - and to the result that comes out of it - that you understand your true sensation, your true emotion. Even something as simple as always choosing the same colour."
📢 What is dissemination, anyway?
A dedicated session that afternoon covered something most youth projects skip: how you actually share what you have made. The booklet, the videos, the articles, the testimonials - who they are for, where they go, and why a result nobody sees is not really a result.
🎬 The screening, and the Talent Show
By the end of the day, everyone gathered in the dining room and watched everything that had been made. The daily report:
"An incredible job that we did in an entire day. It was an emotional moment that strengthened our deep connections between each other."
Then the Talent Show.
🎨 Day 7 - Thursday 2 October · Finishing, and letting go
♻️ Upcycling workshop
Alongside it, one of the quietest and most characteristic sessions of the week: participants painted and decorated recovered glass jars and bottles, turning discarded containers into objects worth keeping.
It was not a lecture on sustainability. It was two hours of paint, brushes and reused material - which is how the message tends to survive the journey home.
✅ Youthpass, and closing the project
The closing session brought back the Hopes and Fears written on day one and compared them with what had actually happened. Participants worked through their Youthpass - identifying, in their own words, which of the eight key competences they had developed and how. Youthpass certificates were issued and sent to every participant after the exchange.
🎉 The Final Event, and the Farewell Party
In the afternoon, everything made during the week was shown together at the Final Event.
And then the Farewell Party, which is always the same everywhere and always completely different.
🎬 Watch the day
📦 What the participants created 🎥
Everything below was produced by the young people themselves, during the week.
📢 Raising Awareness Video - A subtitled piece on inclusion, written and performed by the participants:
"Inclusion is not just a word, it is an action. It is sharing what we have, even when it seems little. It is offering a shelter when someone feels alone in the rain. It is noticing a friend's silence and turning it into a hug. Inclusion means we don't leave anyone behind."
📚 Educational Video - On symmetry in art, from ancient Greek architecture "where order meets elegance" to Picasso deliberately breaking the rules. It closes with: "This is one of the things you can learn in Calabria." It is the most watched video of the whole project.
✨Inspirational Video - On creativity and the fear of getting it wrong:
"Creativity is the spark that ignites your imagination. It is the courage to dare, to experiment, and to express yourself in a unique way. Don't be afraid to make mistakes - let your creativity flow freely and you'll discover that your potential is limitless."
📼 Project Video - The whole week in under two minutes.
📖 The booklet
An artistic digital booklet containing the daily reports written by the participants themselves, the non-formal methods used, the myths and legends of all six countries, the character profiles from the mask theatre, and the Conversation Cards.
🃏 The Conversation Cards
A deck of questions written by the participants, then reused by them as the format for the podcasts. It works anywhere, with any group, and needs nothing but the cards.
🖼️ The artworks
A collective canvas. Collages. Masks and character profiles. The Dreamland country posters. Painted upcycled jars and bottles.
💬 Testimonials
"I learned how to be more creative, and how to cooperate well with people from different countries." - Christina, Greece 🇬🇷
"Let yourself be surprised. I came here with a lot of optimistic expectations, but I also had my suspicions - and I've never been more pleasantly surprised. I've never clicked with so many different people in so many different ways." - Simona, North Macedonia 🇲🇰
"Connection. Because I think all of us really feel connected to the other people - with all the activities, the hug, the conversation cards. Connection is the perfect word for this." - Tommaso, Italy 🇮🇹
"My favourite thing was getting to meet people from different cultures and learning about their habits and traditions and their way of living. I'm glad I got to make friends from such different parts of the world." - Ira, Romania 🇷🇴
"I learned a lot of perspectives, points of view and histories of other people, and that gave me new ideas - maybe to make a movie in the future about all of this. Because all the things we learned here, like inclusion and diversity, would be nice to show to other people." - Amaya, Spain 🇪🇸
"I have learned different ways to express myself - mostly emotions - and different ways to increase my creativity." - Leila, North Macedonia 🇲🇰
"It helps you a lot with opening yourself, being more creative, expressing your emotions." - Georgi, Bulgaria 🇧🇬, on why young people should do Erasmus+
"There's a lot of drawing, there's a lot of art, it's very open-ended, there's a lot of freedom and improvisation. And it's Italy - come on." - Argyris, Greece 🇬🇷
📸 The Full Photo Album
One unforgettable week in Filadelfia. 🇮🇹✨
From our creative workshop sessions to the magic of the Costa degli Dei and our daily intercultural exchanges, this album captures the journey of Arte Senza Confini. These photos tell the story of the connections we built, the art we created, and the experience we shared. See the week through our lens: 📸 View full album 📔
🌍 What happened afterwards
Across the six countries, participants and partner organisations shared the experience on their own channels, organising dissemination event and artistic follow up activities in their countries, inspired by out project in Calabria.
The videos keep being watched. The Conversation Cards keep being used. And in Filadelfia, a handful of residents now know exactly what an Erasmus+ youth exchange looks like, because thirty young Europeans asked them to sing.
♻️ Sustainability, and the digital side
The project ran on reused and recovered materials wherever the activities allowed - most visibly in the upcycling workshop, where discarded glass jars and bottles became painted objects. Sustainability and the Sustainable Development Goals were among the stated objectives from the start, and they showed up in the making rather than in a slide.
On the digital side, the exchange was built around tools the participants could keep using at home: Trello boards for daily reflection, Canva for the presentation templates and the booklet, CapCut for video editing, a shared drive for the media, and the group's own social channels for publishing. None of it required expensive equipment. All of it is free, and all of it is still available to them.
🚀 Want to be part of the next one?
Arte Diem Calabria organises Erasmus+ youth exchanges and training courses in Calabria, and works with partner organisations across Europe. You do not need to be an artist. You do not need perfect English. You do not need to have done anything like this before.
As one of our participants put it at the end of the Italian podcast, speaking straight down the microphone to whoever was listening: Get in touch with us - it's worth it.
Co-funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the Agenzia Italiana per la Gioventù. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.
🤝 Meet Our Partners
“Arte Senza Confini” was made possible thanks to a strong partnership of youth organisations from six countries. Each partner played a key role in preparing, selecting, and supporting participants before the mobility, and in ensuring inclusion, quality learning, and meaningful follow-up after the exchange.
🇲🇰 North Macedonia - Centre for Regional Sustainable Development Negotino (CRSD) Instagram | Facebook
🌍🤝 Thanks to Erasmus+ and Agenzia Italiana per la Gioventù
“Arte Senza Confini” was funded by the Erasmus+ Programme of the European Union, with support from the Agenzia Italiana per la Gioventù. We appreciate this opportunity, which enabled young people to engage in high-quality non-formal education, enhance key competences, and experience European citizenship in a tangible manner.
Project code: 2025-1-IT03-KA152-YOU-000297952
🏛️ Thanks to the Municipality of Filadelfia
We sincerely appreciate the Municipality of Filadelfia for their institutional support and trust in youth initiatives. Special thanks to Mayor of Filadelfia, Dott.ssa Anna Bartucca and Councillor Veronica Gugliotta for embracing the group and enhancing the connection between the project and the local community. This openness demonstrated to participants that Erasmus+ projects can truly drive local development and sustainability pathways.
🏡 Thanks to Residenza L'Antico Borgo Hotel & Stonehenge Club
A sincere thank you to Residenza L'Antico Borgo Hotel, Francesco (The King of the Castle), and his team for hosting the youth exchange and for their hospitality, flexibility, and practical support throughout the week. A comfortable and welcoming environment is crucial for inclusion and group well-being, and your assistance helped participants feel safe, settled, and prepared to fully engage in the program.
❤️ Thanks to the Local Community of Filadelfia
Lastly, we extend our gratitude to the Filadelfia local community - including residents, shopkeepers, youth, and all who engaged with the group during the scavenger hunt and public events. Your curiosity, kindness, and openness made participants feel welcomed and supported, transforming Filadelfia into a genuine learning environment, rather than just a place.
🫶🎭 Grazie Ragazz* ✨🎨
37 people. 6 countries. 1 vision. After this unforgettable week in Calabria, one thing is clear: ART has no borders! It transcends boundaries, breaks down walls, and forges connections among us. In our shared passion for creativity, we discover the strength of our value, uniting us in the diversity of expression. Together, we enjoyed the power of art to bridge divides and celebrate our differences as our greatest strength, thanks to the European Union and the Erasmus+ Programme!
Loaded a generated pano into my Quest 3 via SideQuest last weekend. Surreal but noticeably lower res than the store demos.
Tool I used: AI panorama generator. Fine for an afternoon project, not for a finished VR piece.