The Tourism Department of the Veneto Region, in collaboration with Centro Internazionale Civiltà dell’Acqua Onlus and the UNESCO Global Network of Water Museums, inaugurate the 2021-2022 school year with a pilot educational project for schools, dedicated to the provinces of Venice, Padua, and Rovigo and financed by the European project "TAKE IT SLOW - Smart and Slow Tourism Supporting Adriatic Heritage for Tomorrow" - a strategic project in the frame of the Interreg Italy - Croatia program, of which the Tourism Directorate is a partner together with 6 other Italian regional entities and 5 Croatian, focused on sustainability.
The training activity was launched on the 14th of October, with the online plenary meeting entitled Redesigning the Future of Tourism (held via zoom), with the presence of 200 students from 10 classes. At the meeting attended, as a speakers, Mr Mauro Giovanni Viti, director of Veneto Region Tourism Department, Mr Eriberto Eulisse, director of Centro Internazionale Civilità dell’Acqua Onlus, Mr Stefan Marchioro, Veneto Region Tourism Department executive. During the Q&A section, a lot of questions have been done by the classes, showing how high the interest is towards these thematic.
To train young people by actively involving them, stimulating their creativity on the themes of slow, accessible, and sustainable tourism, making them personally “directors” of the narration and promotion of the territory: these are the aims of the training project.
The project, structured in two phases, will continue throughout the school year. From Adria (Cipriani Institute) to Porto Viro (Colombo Institute), from Rovigo (De Amicis Institute) to Dolo (Lazzari Institute), up to Padua (ITSE Einaudi - Gramsci di Padova and IPSSAR Pietro D'Abano di Abano), the participation of the schools was not long in coming. With the opening of the school year 2021-2022, supported by experts, students will participate, in the first phase, in interactive workshops - in the classroom or virtually, based on the evolution of the pandemic - with the aim to explore issues related to sustainable eco-tourism along the inland waterways of river navigation - from the Po Delta to the medieval canals of the Euganean Hills, from the Venice Lagoon to the Venetian Coast - and the natural and cultural heritage of water, understood as a resource for sustainable development and the quality of slow tourism. An immersion to deepen and embrace the concept of awareness linked to tourism and territorial promotion, completed with guided excursions, by bike, on foot, or aboard traditional boats, to discover - and rediscover - the itineraries presented: Delta del Po, Euganean Hills, Venice Lagoon and Eastern Veneto.
It will follow a creative moment, with the second phase, in which the students, supported by the UNESCO Global Network of Water Museums, will try their hand at making short films with the stop-motion technique. Thanks to individual tutoring and in-depth workshops on digital techniques, on the composition of the storyboard with participatory tools, and on graphics and contents, each class will develop a digital product, thus giving shape to their own authentic vision of sustainable tourism, to spread and promote it on social networks. The most deserving works will participate in the Unesco competition "The Water We Want", organized by the Global Network of Water Museums (as a "flagship initiative" of UNESCO-IHP).
Thanks to the TAKE IT SLOW educational project, students will have the opportunity to put themselves in the "direction" to tell the world, with innovative digital tools, the welcoming charm of sustainable Veneto.
