According to the Rapporto Giovani 2022 by Istituto Toniolo, over 60% of young people living in inland areas feel there’s a lack of spaces and opportunities to express themselves and take part in community life. On top of this, it comes a digital gap: data collected by Intesa Sanpaolo in 2025 show that in Italy only 42% of people aged 16 to 74 have basic digital skills (compared to the European average of 56%), while just 22% have advanced skills (the European average is 33%).
StoryMakers was created with the aim of bridging this double gap, offering students from the Val di Fiastra — a territory at the foot of the Sibillini Mountains, in the Fiastra River Valley — learning paths in podcasting and videomaking. These activities provide practical skills, encourage an emotional exploration of the territory, and open up spaces for new bottom-up collective narratives.
Workshops at school
During the 2025/2026 school year, the students of the Gentili-Tortoreto Institute of San Ginesio, in the province of Macerata, will take part in three workshop cycles to observe and narrate the Val di Fiastra territory through their own eyes.
- Emotional Mapping Workshops: students will be guided to explore the territory by following the sensations and stories that emerge through walkscapes, creating an emotional map that conveys a collective and unique portrait of the area.
- Podcasting Workshops: from collecting field testimonies to writing and recording, one group will work on producing a podcast dedicated to the places and voices of the community, together with Andrea Genzone, podcaster and educator.
- Video Storytelling Workshops: a second group will instead follow a path focused on audiovisual language with videomaker David Giacomelli, conducting fieldwork to collect materials and interviews, and producing an original video through filming, editing, and visual narration.
The events
The final outputs – podcasts and video – will be shared not only within the school but also with the wider community. A digital platform will host and make the materials accessible, while a digital community map will organize them into a living, participatory archive of the territory.
Public presentation events are also planned: from meetings with other students to collective strolls through the narrated places, during which the contents can be listened to and viewed right in the contexts that inspired them.
Credits
StoryMakers – Audiovisual stories of communities is a project curated by Sineglossa, in collaboration with Borgofuturo and the Gentili-Tortoreto Institute of Ripe San Ginesio (MC), funded by the Marche Region – Youth Policies and the Presidency of the Council of Ministers – Department for Youth Policies and the Universal Civil Service through FNPG 2023.
