Our Historical and Cultural Heritage as our Legacy towards Peace and International Future (Our Past is our Legacy for our Future) Erasmus Project

Project Title

Our Historical and Cultural Heritage as our Legacy towards Peace and International Future (Our Past is our Legacy for our Future)

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 2020

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: International cooperation, international relations, development cooperation; Intercultural/intergenerational education and (lifelong)learning; EU Citizenship, EU awareness and Democracy

Project Summary

This project was created as a reflection of our societies. To begin with, although Europe is a family of nations together, members of the same continent, there are still countries that are living between conflict and xenophobia.Two of these nations are for example Turkey and Greece. This project started as an idea between teachers and members of the local community of Mesologi, as well as external parts of the Greek school from the wider community. 2021 marks the celebration of 200 years from the Greek revolution. Our town, Mesologi, is one of the greatest cities in Greek history with some of the greatest history and cultural backgrounds in the country. Our public discourse led to realisation that past has two sides, a dark and a bright one. Unfortunately, humans tend to insist on the dark side of things and unfortunately still until today there are many conflicting nations within our European family. We believe that nations and individuals should leave the dark side behind them, and instead focus on the bright side, appreciate our great historical and cultural heritage as a continent and use that as a way towards peace and collaboration. Another element of modern societies that is currently critiqued is nationalism that can lead to xenophobia and hatred. This was another element that we wanted to improve as teachers in our society. Love for one’s nations, one’s history is not bad, but we believe that is something that can bring nations together. The project then also aims to unearth the great history of each of the participating countries and communicate these within the public sphere. For the implementation of this project it was clear that specific partners were requires. Firstly, the partners needed to be experienced not only in EU collaborations but also within the topic of teaching history through a creative way in their curriculum. Secondly, the schools needed to be within specific contexts that would allow teachers and pupils to explore historical and cultural contexts. Schools are bases in the following towns: Mesologi, Istanbul, Naples and Krakow. Each of these contexts have to demonstrate a great historical and cultural value within our European family. When teachers from each of these schools came together and started discussing about the objectives of the project the initially carried out research projects within their school communities to identify the best ways to approach this topic. They all identified that although all teachers were passionate about history and were trying to implement creative pedagogical ways students, especially the ones of high school age, show a strong disinterest of the subject of history. To make matters worse although each of these students live in rich cultural and historical settings the vast majority of them was now familiar with their local history nor have visited some of the most important historical or cultural sites of their local context. This is when we realised that we needed a completely different approach to teach our pupils towards finding our about history, learning about their great past, sharing that with peers across Europe and most importantly through that element to reinforce active collaboration, friendship and peace between each of these nations. However, this project does not only have huge value for the direct beneficiaries, but through our project we want to to approach the wider community within our continent. Our project uses the methodology of critical historical inquiry, through which our pupils will be exploring their local contexts of historical and cultural value. As part of the project a range of external providers and volunteers have agreed to support towards the delivery of this teaching and pedagogical methodology. As we are living in the area of technology we considered of combining history and technology. Hence, during the first year of the project the pupils from each of the communities will be participating in two art galleries (photography and abstract art) through which they will be communicating the cultural and historical heritage from their local communities with peers across Europe as well as stakeholders and the wider community. This well then lead to the second year of the project, where all pupils will be working together towards the production of a documentary between the different nations that will be demonstrating how our rich cultural and historical heritage can be used as our way towards friendship, collaboration and peace between all nations of our European family. This project has a huge impact to the wider community. A range of volunteers, Civil Society Organisations, other school communities, academics have already expressed interest in participating and supporting our initiative. Furthermore, as this project will be using extensive virtual and streaming methods it aims to reach out to as many individuals as possible. We aim to demonstrate how history is a great way of moving towards more peaceful societies.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 158876 Eur

Project Coordinator

ENIAIO EIDIKO EPAGGELMATIKO GYMNASIO – LYKEIO MESOLOGGIOY & Country: EL

Project Partners

• II Liceum Ogolnoksztalcace im. Krola Jana III Sobieskiego w Krakowie
• 1st Primary School of Messolonghi
• Menderes Ortaokulu
• Liceo Elsa Morante