Juggling among cultures: DRama dancE Arts Music for a Multicultural Europe Erasmus Project

Project Title

Juggling among cultures: DRama dancE Arts Music for a Multicultural Europe

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: Intercultural/intergenerational education and (lifelong)learning; Creativity and culture; Early School Leaving / combating failure in education

Project Summary

The implementation of the project was in line with the project application. All minor changes that were made are documented in the Interim Report. The pandemic situation due to COVID 19 nearly brought the project to a standstill. The final meeting in Germany where the students were supposed to engage with music and take part in an intercultural workshop in May 2020, had to be postponed and redeschuled to February 2021. The situation was aggravated further by the fact that many of the participating students entered their final year of school preparing for their school leaving examinations. The teachers established regular online teachers’ meeting on eTwinning and it was decided to finish the project with a virtual event. As a starter, the students prepared presentations on current music trends, traditional and the national anthem of their respective country and uploaded them in the Twin Space. Departing from the original idea of letting the students work with songs about spring, an international rap workshop was planned as singing together online proved to be too difficult. 18-20 students plus two teachers from each country participated in a 5-day online rap workshop in the afternoons, after class. The workshop was provided by Rapschool NRW, an organisation focussing on creative artwork with students from all over Germany and Europe. A German music teacher from Maximilian-Kolbe-Gymnasium (MKG) provided an online workshop for ten teachers from each country on how to produce easy rap music with students and use it in the foreign language classroom. After this workshop a mini project was started in grade 6 at MKG. The ideas from the workshop are supposed to have a long-term benefit on foreign language teaching at the schools. In the course of the students’ rap workshop the students learned about the history and production of rap music. The German music teacher had composed a basic beat that was used as background music. The students discussed what Europe means to them and the aspects that were collected were used by each student to develop their own lines. Each students rapped his/her lines at home and sent the results to the organiser via WhatsApp who combined them into a rapsong. A Lithuanian student produced a video combining photos from the project with the rap song. This video was presented to the school communities at the four partner schools. This way, the original objectives of having the students engage with music and in an intercultural workshop as European citizens to produce a final movie, could be met.
At MKG reports were published on the school website (www.mkg-koeln.de) and in local newspapers. A website was created for DREAM that is linked to the eTwinning page (www.mkg-dream.de). The final video was presented at the school’s evening of Arts and Culture on 19 March 2021. On 4 July 2020 a Day of Diversity was held at school with a cultural dance workshop for the ERASMUS students.
At Liceo Bagatta the European Day of Languages was celebrated on 26 September 2020 (https://bagattaerasmusdream.home.blog/european-day-of-languages/). The school participated in the European Day of Languages T-shirt Logo contest. Dissemination was done at the Erasmus corner at school, through the web pages https://bagattaerasmusdream.home.blog/ and newspaper articles (https://bagattaerasmusdream.home.blog/dissemination/ ).
IES Jandula celebrated the international Day of Flamenco on 16 November 2020. ERASMUS DAYS were celebrated: On 15th and 16th of October 2020 a revision of all projects was made, and shown how Erasmus benefits the students. A video was displayed and all students were informed about the projects of this course, including DREAM. Besides, information was shared on the school’s social networks (twitter, facebook, instagram) and webpage. A similar activity was held in 2019 (10-12 October). They also celebrated the European Day of Languages on 26 September 2019. Students from diverse origin read a manifesto in 7 different languages to promote multilingualism, the richness of linguistic diversity and the benefits of learning them. To disseminate their meetings, they also had interviews on local TV radio stations as well as news in the newspapers.
Grigiškės Gymnasium organized the event “We are against racism” on January 10-31 helping students to better understand the problems of racism, ignore existing stereotypes, and develop tolerance.This way all four school were able to show that the students had become Ambassadors of Multiculturalism who will continue their work in the future by conducting a regular event of multiculturalism at their school and who will pass on their work to younger student generations so that their knowledge will not be lost. All project activities and outcomes have been described with presentations, worksheets and videos and made available for other Teachers who want to replicate the activities with their own classes on https://bagattaerasmusdream.home.blog/for-teachers/ .

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 97513,73 Eur

Project Coordinator

Städtisches Maximilian-Kolbe-Gymnasium & Country: DE

Project Partners

• IES Jándula
• Vilniaus savivaldybes Grigiskiu gimnazija
• LICEO DI STATO G.BAGATTA