For the fifth year in a row, the Historical Archives of the European Union took its education programme to Ventotene for six days of educational activities. The island, located off the coast of Lazio, is where Altiero Spinelli passed years of political confinement and where he wrote, with Ernesto Rossi and Eugenio Colorno, the celebrated Ventotene Manifesto calling for a free and united Europe.
The educational project on Ventotene started in 2021 at the request of the island’s primary school teachers. Aware that the HAEU holds one of the few existing clandestine copies of the Manifesto, they wrote to the Archives explaining that “It is important that the children of Ventotene can themselves be able to pass on and tell their own story and the story safeguarded by the island—beginning with the Ventotene Manifesto—to the world.”
Since that first visit in 2021, the HAEU has developed learning activities for every age group attending the Altiero Spinelli school in Ventotene, from kindergarten to middle school. During their stay, Archives educators, led by Leslie Hernández, stimulate an exploration of the island’s past through laboratories based on document facsimiles shared from the Historical Archives’ holdings, including the archival collections of Altiero Spinelli, Ernesto Rossi, Ursula Hirschmann and Ada Rossi. “The aim,” states Leslie, “is to create an intergenerational dialogue between the island’s memories and the memories that gave rise to the Manifesto”.
Leslie and her team create new educational materials and activities for the visits each year. In 2026, they expanded their reach beyond the school with a parallel project engaging the adults who have been resident on the island for years – individuals who have decided to stay there despite the many difficulties of living on a small island, such as the lack of a secondary school for their children.
The European Civic Education Programme archival collection
Another facet of the education programme is its work to collect, select and archive materials produced by students themselves, ranging from drawings and texts to their own reflections on European citizenship captured in recorded interviews. These materials in turn may be used to inform subsequent work done with other classes.
With regard to the history of Ventotene, the young people of the island have shared their stories with the Archives through narratives, drawings, and performances. Moreover, in parallel with the work carried out in the school, the team has also interviewed some of its elderly and long-time residents, thus deepening what the Archives can know and teach about this island.
This new exercise was possible thanks to the great commitment of the entire island community. As remarked by Leslie, “the children, first and foremost, have been involved in the activities from a very young age and today demonstrate an extraordinary capacity for memory and reinterpretation, retracing together the path travelled so far.”
Linking the past with the present and the future
One part of the mission included the presentation of the Ventotene Manifesto to the Mayor, Carmine Caputo, during which the children carried a facsimile copy of the August 1943 edition preserved at the HAEU. The event was built around the youngest children’s reflections on the origins of Ventotene, followed by primary school pupils describing what the island evokes for them, and finally by older students reflecting on three central themes of the Manifesto.
The students focused on the European Union’s motto, “United in Diversity,” echoing the opening lines of the Manifesto. They also highlighted the invitation to undertake “new tasks” by “new men,” emphasising the involvement of women; and finally, they reflected on the role of young people as an essential part of the future path ahead.
During this visit, a child from the island remarked “I am European because I am from Ventotene.”
By unpacking the “how” and the “why” of this statement, the shared hope is that Ventotene islanders both young and old may continue to tell this story themselves well into the future.