Artists and Botanical gardens – Creating and Developing Educational innovation Erasmus Project

Project Title

Artists and Botanical gardens – Creating and Developing Educational innovation

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 : Partnerships for Creativity

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2020

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses; Natural sciences; Creativity and culture

Project Summary

This project is an attempt to integrate experiential learning, participatory pedagogy and artistic actions in Botanical Gardens to create innovative educational material for primary schools. This material will combine creativity and in depth analysis of the natural world providing teachers with tools to increase student engagement and interest in natural sciences and sustainability. To use experiential learning in Botanical Gardens as a pedagogical tool results in more engaged students, diverse learning opportunities, and aesthetical experience.

The project will create dialogue between natural science, artists and teachers has the potential of creating settings for experiential learning and participatory pedagogy for in-service art and natural science (or class room) teachers. They will be working with artists and natural scientists creating assignments that are based on the UN SDGs. The project will take place in three different Botanical Gardens. In each garden teachers from the participating schools will participate and share their experience from the Garden and from their work with their students.

The final output will be a project website with 9 assignments that all are developed around the UN SDGs explaining the expected learning outcome. Three of the assignments will focus on water, three on biodiversity and sustainability and three on soil. The assignment all encourages understanding of the balance of life on our planet aiming to increase nature literacy and love for nature awaken the participant to empathy towards the Nature. The artistic actions create settings to develop care for our environment as well as understanding. Issues related to recognising the importance of empathy, intrinsic values and the relationship between meaning making and social cultural contexts will be at centre. These issues people can use to reconnect with nature as awareness of the problem rises, so does the willingness to take action.

Three international teacher training workshops will be held, one in each participating country. Participants in each workshop will be an expert from the Reykjavik department of education and youth, the project manager, three artists, six botanical garden specialists and art and natural science teachers two from each participating school. Together they will develop and try out the assignments they will later try out with their pupils. Additionally thirty local teachers will be invited to each workshop creating greater local and national level impact of the project resulting in more schools adopting and using the assignments created in the project.

The project website will be designed with an interactive option that will allow the participating schools to add their experiments/work to the page. Between each workshop the participants will consider things that have gone right as well as things that have gone wrong. Then convert lessons learned into an action in the participating institutions. Project manager will list items for disseminating the lessons learned.

The project will additionally produce and publish a reviewed academic paper. This will serve to evaluate the success of the resources created by the project, increase the viability of the project and its results and further develop the field of primary school education when it comes to teaching natural sciences through creativity and the arts.

3 multiplier event conferences will be held, one in each participating country introducing the project findings, reaching out to local communities.

In the workshops we will work directly with almost 100 teachers and via the multiplier events reach at least 300 more educational professionals. In the long term the project website and future promotion of the project on a European level will increase the wider impact of the project and potentially lead to further Erasmus+ projects.

All project results will be published in Icelandic, Lithuanian and also English to ensure that the resources will have a high potential for transferability.

The project aims to develop teachers’ self and collective efficacy. Action competence resulting in action efficacy in the spirit of becoming a better individual that can contribute to collective actions for sustainability. It should impact the schools to put a stronger focus on developing settings for students’ nature and environmental connectedness and environmental concern. It should also develop students from the participating schools environmental commitment behavior as they participating teachers develop their teaching towards place based approach with a focus on social identity and place attachment, including place involvement, pleasure and arousal.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 259690 Eur

Project Coordinator

City of Reykjavik Skóla og fristundasvið & Country: IS

Project Partners

• National Botanic Gardens of Ireland
• VILNIAUS UNIVERSITETAS
• Vilniaus Pavilnio progimnazija
• STICHTING THE EUROPEAN REGIONAL COUNCIL OF INSEA
• Grasagarður Reykjavíkur
• Sacred Heart Boys National School
• Laugarnesskóli