What?

Leading on from the successful European experience of Comics for Equality, Africa and Mediterraneo proposed a particular offer to the Alghero territory of Sardinia. Young students from 4 secondary schools tested themselves in various artistic and creative activities to launch an anti-racist and intercultural message to the community in an engaging mix of “meticciata” gastronomy, murals, comics, freeze frames and anti-racism.

How?

ComiX4= in Sardinia created with almost 80 young people artistic workshops addressing issues relating to migrations, anti-racism, discrimination and intercultural dialogue, in an attempt to build together with the young people various shared communicative products starting with their own active involvement. The European Comics for Equality project’s catalogue and educational toolkit have been fundamental educational tools used in the implementation of the whole enterprise in all of the classes involved.

During the workshop of anti-racist recipes, the students from the Gastronomy Institute studied the origins of the ingredients sourced from all over the world, inventing new dishes starting from the traditional Sardinian recipes. “The drops of the Mediterranean with an essence of the orient” – revision of traditionally Sardinian “culurgiones”. “Recalled from the Orient” – risotto with courgettes and turmeric, “Su Sarmale” – a meeting of a typical Romanian dish and a typical Sardinian side dish: a true and fitting gastronomical blend! After having prepared the dishes and illustrated them on paper, the students tested their own culinary preparations presenting their creations during the final event of the project.

The students from the second Sardinian school got their hands dirty… but by painting! With our professionals and graphic professionals, the young people selected a blank wall in their school and designed and created a mural to communicate a message of tolerance and inclusion for the rest of the school.

The children of the third school, on the other hand, concentrated on creating comics small books addressing issues relating to the fights against racism, xenophobia and migration. Through a brief training on the language of the comics and on illustration, the students thought up the narratives, wrote the script, the dialogues and proceeded with the sharing of the narratives in cartoon. “In flight from Africa“, “The two parallel stories“, “4 children”, “Spatial journey” and “A dangerous adventure” are only some of the cartoon narratives created by the students.

The last original creations of the students involved from the fourth Sardinian school were the stop-motion videos. After an introductory meeting focusing on the freeze frame technique and on the photographic elements, the children became script writers, directors, photographic curators and actors. The students wrote the narratives, created the characters, made the set designs, shot the photos useful for the creation of the videos, fine-tuned the dialogues and recorded the audio. Thus “Free to choose” was born – the story of a Syrian refugee in his escape from war, “My smartphone” – on the exploitation behind the production of our mobile phones, “Spatial discrimination” – where the greenhouse effect and the hole in the ozone layer compel some rich and powerful men to emigrate and seek refuge in a faraway land.

All the works created by the students (illustrated recipes, comics small books, stop-motion videos and murals) are available on the project’s Tumblr webpage http://comicsforequalitysardegna.tumblr.com/, as too are the photos taken during the workshop.