C4C: Counter-Narration for Counter-terrorism

The main aim of “Counternarration4Counterterrorism - C4C” project is to support and use the testimonies and the stories of the victims of terrorism. Assuming a role analogous to the one played by the victims and the survivors of the prosecution and of the concentration camps during the Second after War in the construction of a European anti-totalitarian identity. Because it becomes very relevant to establish which stories take part in creating our idea of terrorism and because terrorism searches the spectators' gaze, spreading fear and terror, our aim was to counter-narrate such stories improving the victims' gaze: their narratives, feelings and positions. Our assumption is that stories of the survivors, or the victims’ family members, may create a counter-narrative bearing positive values. Those of dialogue, tolerance, peace, non-violence, respect of diversity, respect of democratic values. The stories offer an alternative model of language, values and rhetoric with the purpose of reinforce critical skills and awareness among young people towards the use of violence.

To enhance and make the "Voice of the victims” available to the educational system, literary and media, the C4C project developed a Multilanguage open source web platform, entitled “The Terrorism Survivors   Storytelling - Global platform for resilience stories and radicalisation awareness”, which contains:

• The archive Global Data-base of the selected materials and files containing terrorism survivors’ storytelling, catalogued and reachable by the search engine (around 100 db records of narratives).
• The Multimedia Deposit where a part of the materials (around 100 Gigabytes of files) is directly available in the different digital forms of texts, videos, photos, and so on, reachable by registered members for digital storytelling activity, under creative common license, with the purpose of creating new communication/didactic products through the e-collaborative tools currently on the platform.
• Furthermore, the platform offers selected didactic and methodological resources, the report on the activity with the C4C project target group, to help its practical usage at the ground floor carried on by practitioners, teachers, tutors for educational/prevention/de-radicalisation programmes.

With the support of the didactic programme, based on the Learning Circle didactic method and “Project-Based Learning”, the platform “The Terrorism Survivors Storytelling” has been tested in an Italian school during the whole school year 2013/14 with the target group: 2 classes for a total of 50 students. The didactic activity has been carried out, apart from the teachers, the C4C project team and the partners of the project, in particular by the members of the Italian Association of the Victims of Terrorism (Aiviter), who has joined several times the classes for a direct participation to the lessons. The school classes have been divided into working groups (5 groups per each class) and have elaborated a topic for an audio/video to be realised (documentary, spot, rap, editing of archive images, interview, backstage, animation: the kind and style were free options). They proceeded into the phase of realisation, working on the platform “The Terrorism Survivors Storytelling” and then producing, in the phase of the definitive editing, their final videos and outputs. The presentation of the first results (3 videos) of the project took place on the occasion of the commemorations for the European Remembrance Day for the Victims of Terrorism in Madrid on March 11th, 2014. The final videos and outputs of all the students were presented on the occasion of an event in Turin entitled “Europe against terrorism” on May 12th, 2014 in front of other students from numerous schools, institutions and other public in the vicinity of the Italian Remembrance Day of the victims of terrorism, on May 9th.

Contact details:

AIVITER - Presso l'Amministrazione Provinciale di Torino
Via Maria Vittoria 12
10123 Torino
Italy

Luca Guglielminetti
Email: info@vittimeterrorismo.it 
Tel: (+39) 011 532687
Tel: (+39) 335 6619003