Activating an ecoliterary heritage from the uplands to inlands and the whole Galician people awareness.
From the beginning of the foundational work we had a priority: the intervention in the educational centers, schools and institutes of Galicia, prioritizing the mountains of Lugo (NUTS ES112). We had a fantastic background based on three previous milestones: the integration of “The uplands’ ‘ book of poems and the figure of Novoneyra on literature education and literature anthologies developing a process of canonization since the first 80’s, helped by his hyperactive visits and activities to major part of education centers until this death on 99 and being celebrated after his death with the celebration of “Galician Letters” Award on 2010, the major recognizement to a death writer in Galicia, only possible from 10 years of the death and achieved at first year, generating many didactic resources, regular activities and events on educative centers and in general at regional level during all the year. This is the moment of founding the Fundacion Uxío Novoneyra with the education activity on the goals declared with Spanish interest on 2012.
Throughout a decade we have developed numerous literary reading and cultural linked activities in the schools of the eastern mountains, especially on mountain ones named after Uxío Novoneyra in the municipalities of Folgoso do Courel and Pedrafita do Cebreiro. The students of these centers continue to celebrate an annual visit to the headquarters of the foundation during the school year and, as patrons and workers of the entity, we move to work in situ activities directly related to the dissemination of the poetic work and stories of Novoneyra, books gifting and achieving all kind of cultural activities to them. During the last year, we have begun to implement a new tool for intervention: bibliotherapy which we started to use with women in risk of exclusion and, afterwards, with the children of the ESO and college centers.
In addition to visits to all the Galician country explaining Novoneyra and the foundation since 2010, we want to remark our intervention in educational centers with the Ámeto Mítico poetry writing residences on the Camino de Santiago which we have been organizing during since 2019. These residencies have already celebrated three editions (2019-2021-2022) and 17 poets from different countries and languages have recited annually in 8 secondary and primary schools on the French Way in the towns of Vilafranca do Bierzo, Folgoso do Courel, Pedrafita do Cebreiro, Becerreá, Palas de Rei, Lugo, Arzúa and Santiago de Compostela, where the poets recited their compositions before the children of the schools disseminated along the Camino. Beside reading their poetry, the poets shared their experience as pilgrims within a literary residence that aims to recover the Jacobean thematic influence for current poetry. Educational intervention is a central pillar of the residency project to give back to the community a creative process enriched through direct contact with students from different Galician villages, towns and cities.
Besides being part of the “Science for Earth”, we also participate in numerous European project projects, many of them with the formative DNA to teachers and students, specially Erasmus+ KA210. The experience we have had since 2013 in Erasmus line projects has produced for the community a return widely recognized and valued by the community itself in a region as Galicia very poor in participation of these project by their educative centers and administrations and especially on a province and a municipality with a population of less than a thousand inhabitants and with an inverted population pyramid where aging and emigration have been endemic for more than a century.
Teachers, artists, stonemasons, artisans, and our rotative staff of cultural managers of the foundation have participated in meetings held in many European countries exchanging local knowledge and know-how, disseminating research activities that take place, for example, at the CPI Uxío Novoneyra in Seoane do Courel.
The projection of these experiences has resulted in numerous families of the Courel Mountains with whom we simultaneously try to develop archive and memory projects, such as the Archive of the Memory of the Women of Courel, which we started during the pandemic confinement and that today we keep open with the aim of recovering the memory of the women of the mountains, always consciously trying to program our cultural action from a local, gender and intergenerational perspective.
Below we share the complete project history of the projects in which we participate only linked to formal education: The three ongoing ones now: First the Erasmus+ KA201 Science for Earth that requested this article, focused to training teachers and students on integration of environmental and climatic crisis criteria on all educational curricula, working on integrating on artistic and cultural heritage contents. Erasmus+ KA227 Perform for change, about community engagement through performing arts on climate change, and ABMS (2021-2023) training teachers and speakers about preventing and fighting bullying into education centers with scenic arts training to children. The Creative Europe BE (P)ART (2020-2022) supports the literary reading activities between youth excluded groups or under risk, focusing us as a partner to rural ones. This project is the continuation of SILO (2017-2019) that was focused on excluding groups from literary reading policies, not only targeting the young ones. These 2 projects include school activities with poets and writers during the last five years. Other important one was the Erasmus+ Capacity Building AESOP (2018-2022) that offer non-formal training to youth on scenic arts to use the territorial immaterial heritage to artistic productions to tourists.
The most important one by the structural output active nowadays for the entity was Museschool Project (2018-2021) about integration of museums on school education that caused the founding of our actual support group of teachers that achieves 30 different members on different educational centers at regional level participating now regularly coordinated by the retired teachers Alicia López Pardo, friend of Novoneyra, and Miguel Carnota and members from the Courel school and the own family and circle of Novoneyra ever today.
In conclusion, since our inauguration we wanted to facilitate the training of the teachers and students of all Galicia region in general, of the rural area of our region are part of experiences that put in pedagogical relationship in a European context prioritizing the mountains population taking into account all age groups (with particular attention to youth), to do it with a gender perspective by developing activities specially designed for women residents and visitors.
Public quality education for free, lifelong learning, the promotion of creativity, knowledge and intervention in the territory, the empowerment of groups at risk of social vulnerability, the care of the environment, the activation of tangible and intangible heritage, are the topics of interest linked to the Erasmus projects mentioned above. These prioritary centers are the backbone of one of the most ambitious lines of the initial project: to activate culture linked to rural development processes in a mountain territory which also has the specificity of being remote, that is to say, a mountainous place.
The long history of involvement of the entity in processes of relational nature and participatory dynamics with the community that continuously integrates training proposals are today a factor of identity recognized by the community of the territory we inhabit.
