Past, present and future hobbies and Culture Erasmus Project

Project Title

Past, present and future hobbies and Culture

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 2019

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Early School Leaving / combating failure in education; Access for disadvantaged; Economic and financial affairs (incl. funding issues)

Project Summary

We are two teachers and we have been involved for the last two years in a project of territorial surveying in the former coal-mining area (bassing minier) in Pas-de-Calais. This project aims at having the pupils act as researchers and they will thus ask themselves questions about leisure and cultural activities in their area, now and in fifty years from now.
We quickly realized that the pupils who entered the project had a very negative image of their territory and of themselves. As they are not used to moving within their area, they have a quite fixed image of their family model, leisure, their own skills and their future jobs. Faced with immobility and to shake off social determinism the idea of taking them elsewhere came as an evidence.

The goal of this project was twofold :

– first, enriching our speech through discoveries and through comparison with other leisure and cultural activities
– second bringing our pupils out of their local territory, town, neighbourhood and confront them with mobility (some of them have never been on a plane), develop their autonomy, their trust, their self-esteem, and to widen the field of possibilities.

We have chosen Norway after much debate with the pupils who, being in the position of researchers, ask themselves if this country were, as it is often heard, very advanced on the subjects of leisure, education and culture.
Our group consists of 10 students,6 boys and 4 girls aged 13. The pupils have heterogeneous profiles, some are very much at ease in the classroom, whereas some face extreme difficulties. Some of them are extremely shy and others are more outgoing. Socially speaking, some of them experience financial hardship within their families. Every one of them is happy to take part in this project and answer the call to every action we lead.

As far as the activities are concerned, we chose, to comply with our first objective, to focus on cultural activities : history museums, painting, traditions. Moreover, we wish to attend classes, and to meet school staff.

It is really important to us that our pupils were accommodated by families, that they share their hosts’ activities, that they come back with a lot of new ideas for their territory. Moreover, living with families is a very good way of developing their autonomy, of making them active children, and thus to help them grow and to make them more self-confident.

Most of our activities will be made through writing material and video making. For the writing part, we will first exchange words, beforehand, with our partner in Norway. Thus we will regularly be in touch with our hosts, in particular via e-Twinning, to make the first contact with them, to get to know each other, to introduce ourselves, our territory, our daily activities, our high school. When in Norway, our activities will always be made along with various written exercises : research, presentations, questionnaires, surveys and reports. Language (English and French) will necessarily be at the heart our every thought as pupils will have to obtain information, exchange with their hosts, get people to understand them …

We will also favour the use of videos of various types : reports, portraits and interviews.

We have already thought about the future results of this stay on shorter and longer term, but also regarding the impact on our territory. First of all, hosting Norwegian pupils is already on the agenda for the year after.
The members of the school head office, who are very enthusiastic about the project and closely involved in it, wish to widen the scope of the project to the rest of the school staff. They wish to convince the school staff to build teaching projects revolving around mobility and also increase our pupils’ mobility.
We have also planned with our school head office to broadcast our project to local district primary schools within our primary school – high school liaison. Being aware of the importance of what our pupils will benefit from after this stay, both on a professional and personal level, we view it as essential that we share this experience with younger pupils, already confronted with that immobility.

We have also been regularly in touch, for the last year, with elected members of our city council., and they are in great expectation of our report

On the bassin minier (old coal-mining area in Pas-de-Calais) territory level, we have already told about the project on a local radio programme and we have made contact for a TV interview. We will be more than welcome on the radio station to tell them about what this project has brought for us.

Finally, we are in touch with two « lycées » that also have that kind of project. We share the same goals of opening our pupils’ minds and of territorial surveying. We have already shared the dream of leading a more ambitious project together in the future around our research topics with all pupils and schools together.

Project Website

https://twinspace.etwinning.net/101405/pages/page/2039881

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 14371 Eur

Project Coordinator

Collège Victor Hugo & Country: FR

Project Partners

• Bingsfoss ungdomsskole