Let us Bring Europe Together for heritage Erasmus Project

Project Title

Let us Bring Europe Together for heritage

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : School Exchange Partnerships

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2018

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Cultural heritage/European Year of Cultural Heritage; Creativity and culture; Intercultural/intergenerational education and (lifelong)learning

Project Summary

Actual society is rapidly changing and we are creating a framework where people is expected to move more frequently from their birthplaces to different locations. To succeed in this new situation it is important to know how to communicate with each other in a multicultural context, with different languages, religions, cultural and socio-economic backgrounds. And the first step in this direction is to know what defines the identity of people, at individual and community level; what defines our own identity.
We need to take action and to be aware of the importance of Nature and Cultural heritage. In this project we intend to valorize all those natural and cultural, material and non material resources at local level that, not being milestones of civilization, also help us to explain who we are, our history and our idiosyncrasy.
Our objectives were:
– To raise interest on natural and cultural heritage, particularly in Europe.
– To highlight the importance of environment as an essential element in our lives.
– To put into practice new methodological tools based on outdoor activities on local natural and cultural resources with a holistic and multidisciplinary approach.
– To promote creativity and entrepreneurship towards the promotion and valuation of environment and material and immaterial cultural heritage.
The project partners were five schools from Italy, Lithuania, Poland, Romania and Spain, all of them secondary schools, two general education schools and three vocational training ones. All of them with experience working on transnational projects and with an interesting heritage in their locations. The project was addressed to students 15 to 19 years old.
The project activities were planned to investigate about the local natural and cultural heritage, their influence on people’s identity and their potential as a tool to communicate and to work together as well as to promote the development of the local areas where they were located, at both social and economic level. The working scheme was to learn and investigate about the local heritage resources and share that knowledge in transnational meetings; to learn about the entrepreneurial project linked to those heritage resources and to raise appreciation and consideration towards it with the development of promotional material at local and transnational level. Approximately more than 120 mobility (mainly student mobility) were planned for 2 years. It was widely agreed that the prosperity of our world’s future is closely connected to well-educated children. In our project we made it clear that each student’s voice was heard, because in a milieu of cultural diversity different views act as a catalyst for progress at each level of social life. Student exchanges and other activities in the project did also enhance an understanding toward diverse perspectives on European citizenship and helped our students to develop an appreciation of European cultural diversity and an empathy for different cultures.
In the first short-term staff training meeting, in Spain, teachers learned about the basic ICT tools and skills needed to successfully deal with the task in the project. The following three short-term exchange of students, partners and student devoted time to learn about the heritage of the host countries (Romania, Spain and Lithuania) reflecting on the influence of heritage on people’s identity (Romania), learning about the threats and opportunities of Natural heritage (Spain) and the importance of the cultural one (Lithuania), creating promotional material based on their own gathered material (pictures, video clips, graphs, maps, etc.). In the mid-project short-term staff training, teachers learned basic concepts of marketing and about how to promote entrepreneurial skills in their pupils, as the next two short-term exchanges of students (Italy and Poland) explored the possibilities to use heritage to promote growth and development (Italy) and picked up local entrepreneurs on heritage to present case studies to their colleagues (Poland). The last short-term teachers training was on the creation of a methodology to work on heritage as an educational tool to be made available for everybody via ICT tools under a creative commons licence.
The main challenges faced during the project were:
To work with partners from different cultural environment.
To coordinate different school schedules.
The need to change from physical to online activities due to quarantine and COVID-19.
Formal requirements due to COVID situation and the impossibility to travel during part of the project.

Project Website

https://twinspace.etwinning.net/76751/home

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 137664 Eur

Project Coordinator

Instituto de Enseñanza Secundaria Nosa Señora dos Ollos Grandes & Country: ES

Project Partners

• Colegiul Economic Buzau
• Istituto di Istruzione Superiore “G. Galilei”
• Powiatowe Centrum Ksztalcenia Zawodowego i Ustawicznego w Wieliczce
• Druskininku Ryto gimnazija