Over the past two years, the Timis County Youth Foundation (FITT) in Timișoara has been part of an inspiring project partnership: Youth Impact through Community Festivals (YICF). It’s an Erasmus+ KA210-YOU project that explored how festivals can become tools for youth participation, community engagement, and social impact.
The main goal of YICF was to empower young people and youth workers to design and organise inclusive and community-oriented festivals. Instead of being only spaces for entertainment, festivals were reimagined as platforms where young people can share ideas, address social topics, and actively engage with their communities.
The project brought together organisations from Romania, Spain, Italy, and Norway, creating a diverse learning environment for youth workers and young participants. Throughout the project, participants developed important skills such as event planning, teamwork, budgeting, public speaking, and community engagement, while learning how to co-create meaningful events together with local communities.
The project journey included several international activities. It started with a kick-off meeting hosted in Romania, followed by a training of trainers in Norway. Over the following months, partners and participants continued their collaboration through online capacity-building sessions, practical work on festival design, and a youth exchange in Italy where young people from all partner countries worked together to test ideas for community-based festivals.
A very important part of this journey for us was Youth Summer Fest, organised in Timișoara by us. The local event reflected the spirit of the YICF project by bringing young people closer to their community and giving them an active role in shaping the festival experience. It created a space for participation, collaboration, and dialogue, while also showing how local festivals can become more inclusive and meaningful when young people are involved not only as participants, but also as organisers and decision-makers. For FITT, the festival in Timișoara was an opportunity to turn the project’s ideas into practice and to highlight the value of youth-led community initiatives.
One of the highlights of the project overall was the organisation of four local community festivals, each implemented in one of the partner countries. These events allowed young people to apply what they had learned and actively contribute to the cultural and social life of their communities.
As the project comes to an end, one of its key results is the multilingual YICF magazine and toolkit, “Inclusive, Local, Youth Festivals.” The publication gathers the experiences and lessons learned during the project and offers practical guidance for youth organisations interested in creating inclusive and impactful festivals.
The English and Romanian versions are available below:
RO:
EN:
For FITT and the youth community in Timișoara, sharing this magazine is an important step in spreading the project’s ideas and encouraging more young people to organise events that strengthen community connections.
Even though the project officially concludes, its impact continues through the skills gained, partnerships built, and knowledge now available for youth organisations across Europe.
Project co-funded by the European Union.