Engaging Young People in Local Culture:  A Profile of Râșnov Youth

Gallinoto, Lillian; Anderson, Allan; France, Benjamin; Agran, Ella; Corman, Sean

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Engaging Young People in Local Culture: A Profile of Râșnov Youth

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Râșnov, Romania is a small town in the mountains of Transylvania, where the Mioritics Association works to promote local culture and heritage through community events. Unfortunately, participation from young people aged 14-25 has been low compared to other age groups. Our team collaborated with Mioritics to fulfill our goal of investigating the young population in the town and organizing that information into a profile that helps increase youth involvement in local programs. We worked with Mioritics’s youth volunteers as co-researchers to collect this data through a variety of participatory research methods including surveys, a focus group, and an interactive youth event. The gathered information was synthesized to determine young peoples’ popular locations, activities, prior event experiences, and sense of connection to the community. We shared the resulting profile with Mioritics representatives and together created several recommendations for future program planning in Râșnov: providing a dedicated indoor space for youth, investing in local music artists, filtering attendees to maintain privacy, and focusing on promoting a more open and judgment-free community culture.

This report represents the work of one or more WPI undergraduate students submitted to the faculty as evidence of completion of a degree requirement. WPI routinely publishes these reports on its website without editorial or peer review.

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