💥 SMASH Newsletter #1: Co-creating a method to #SmashTheHate
- La Xixa Creative Social Innovation
- 9 hours ago
- 3 min read
🧠 What is SMASH?
SMASH – Journalistic Theatre for Social Media Action against Online Hate Speech is an Erasmus+ project that brings together six organisations from Spain, France, Italy and Lithuania with a shared goal: to counter online hate speech through art, critical reflection and collective action.
The project brings together six partner organisations: Centro per lo Sviluppo Creativo Danilo Dolci, Panevėžio Teatras Menas, Respect Zone, The Critical, Xamfrà, and La Xixa Teatre, which coordinates the consortium. Together, these organisations draw on extensive expertise in non-formal education, performing arts, media analysis, digital literacy, and community-based work to develop an innovative methodology that combines theatre, critical thinking, and digital tools to address online hate.
🎭 Our methodology (in progress)
The SMASH method is being built around three main pillars:
Journalistic Theatre from the Theatre of the Oppressed,
the Critical Incident Methodology, and
Process-Oriented Psychology (Process Work).
Based on these approaches, the project creates a pathway that connects theatre, social media and digital citizenship.
Through participatory dynamics, improvisation, online content analysis, and collective creation, participants reflect on how hate is constructed online and explore artistic tools to transform it.
The method also integrates a digital ethics and competences framework, and is enriched by the consortium’s diverse expertise — combining performative practices, community-based approaches and critical perspectives on media and digital culture.
During this first phase, the teams have been co-creating and testing the methodology through the local pilots — a collaborative process that allowed partners to bring together multiple perspectives and fine-tune the method before its final version.
🌍 The pilots: spaces for creation and reflection
Between September and November 2025, the six SMASH teams implemented the first pilot workshops in Barcelona, Paris, Palermo and Panevėžys, working with diverse groups of young people.
Each pilot became a space for collective learning where theatre met critical thinking and digital exploration to address online hate from different angles.
The sessions grew into environments of trust and creativity, where humour, empathy and artistic expression became starting points to imagine new ways of being — and communicating — online.
📘 Read the Pilot Reports!
You can now access the National Pilot Reports of the SMASH project, where each organisation shares its experience implementing the method — including discoveries, challenges and ideas that emerged throughout the process.
These reports bring together the voices of young participants and facilitators, showing how a shared methodology is being woven from diverse realities.
💬 What’s next
With the pilots completed and the reports published, the consortium is now entering a new stage: consolidating the SMASH methodology and preparing for the next international activities.
Over the coming months, there will be new opportunities to get involved!
If you’re a youth worker, educator or artist, stay tuned for our capacity building activities, where we’ll share tools and experiences from the SMASH method.
And if you’re curious about creative ways to counter online hate, don’t miss our multiplier events happening across Europe in 2026.
You can also follow our journey and updates on social media — join the movement and help us #SmashHate while strengthening #DigitalResilience 💥
Visit our website: www.smashproject.eu, and follow SMASH on Instagram (@smash_project), TikTok (@smash_project), and YouTube (SMASH Project).
