The pandemic situation we are currently experiencing has made it clear over the past year how important it is to imagine and give life to tourist experiences in the open air and far from the most crowded places, so as to combine the joys of travelling as much as possible with one’s own and others’ safety. With this in mind, Migrantour could not miss the opportunity to explore new possibilities, moving away for once from the big cities where the project was born and trying to develop intercultural walks in small villages and rural areas.
This is how the new Erasmus+ project “Rural Migrantour” gets underway, which will allow another very interesting process to emerge, one that we had already wanted to learn more about and explore for a long time before the pandemic: the role that migration has played in defining the history and social, economic and cultural transformations of small towns, mountainous and border areas. ... that is, of places that we often think of as being ‘far’ from the themes of migration and intercultural dialogue, but which in reality have always been traversed by mobility (of people, ideas, products) and which in recent years have also been the scene of important experiences of widespread reception of asylum seekers and refugees.
On 1 March this new step in the history of Migrantour therefore begins. The new “Rural” phase involves five European countries, some of which are joining our network for the first time (Italy, Slovenia, Holland, Greece and Bulgaria) and is coordinated by TERRA VERA, the Slovenian NGO responsible for Migrantour Ljubljana, that this time will launch a brand new Rural Migrantour walk in Konstanjevica na Krki, a village near to the Slovenian-Croatian border. As for the Italian component of the project, VIAGGI SOLIDALI has the pleasure and honour of coordinating an extremely diverse and interesting local team. The “Italian team” includes Fondazione Nuto Revelli (responsible for Rural Migrantour in Borgata Paraloup, Piedmont), Eurocoop Jungi Mundu (responsibile for Rural Migrantour in Camini, Calabria) and the research center FIERI (responsible for the multiplier events). In Greece, the local partner is Paths of Greece, a young team of hikers that will create a Rural Migrantour walk on the island of Kythira. In Bulgaria, we will have a Rural Migrantour in Svilelengrad, a town right on the border between Bulgaria and Turkey, where our new partner LAC Svilengrad. Finally, we are glad the Dutch team of Pocket Stories will support and facilitate the partecipatory process behind all the activities of the project.