The BRIDGES Consortium gathered in Torino on 15 and 16 June to take stock of the project’s achievements and pave the way for the final months of the project.

‘BRIDGES assessing the production and impact of migration narratives’ held its second Annual Meeting in Torino on 15 and 16 June. FIERI, as BRIDGES co-coordinating institution, hosted this two-day event, which gathered representatives of all 12 partners to take stock of the project’s achievements during the last year and pave the way for the final stretch of the project.

BRIDGES has made great progress during 2022 and 2023 in terms of research, co-production, and dissemination activities. The project has already released a wide range of research results on migration narratives in media and social media (the cases of Spain, Italy, France, Hungary, UK, Germany and a comparative analysis), on innovative strategies against exclusionary narratives (the cases of Spain, Germany, Italy and a comparative paper), and on the role of narratives in migratory decision-making (the cases of the Gambia, the case of Afghans in Turkey, and a comparative paper). BRIDGES has also released its first policy brief.

The project is also in the middle of its co-production activities, including the first stop of the itinerant photo exhibition “Out of Frame” in Rome, the hip hop contest is underway, and the Toolkit on New ways of telling migration narratives has been released. Simultaneously, BRIDGES has continued to implement a full-fledged communications strategy including, among others, multimedia products such as videos, podcasts, and infographics.

All this was presented and discussed at the BRIDGES Steering Committee on 15 June, where the next steps in the coming months were also discussed, concerning among others the impact of narratives on policy-making, both at the national level and at the EU level, as well as the impact of narratives on individual attitudes.

The third BRIDGES Interdisciplinary Seminar took place on the following day, 16 June, to continue the discussion of what makes migration narratives succeed and the factors leading to it.