Music Connects Europe Erasmus Project

Project Title

Music Connects 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 : Strategic Partnerships for Schools Only

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2017

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Teaching and learning of foreign languages; Creativity and culture; EU Citizenship, EU awareness and Democracy

Project Summary

Erasmus + 2017-2019 project: “Music Connects Europe”. Spain (coordinator) and 5 partners: Greece, Italy, Bulgaria, Poland and Latvia.
Our project was conceived with the vocation of being shared by all teachers, students or anyone, thus giving more diffusion to something that was fundamental for all partners: to demonstrate that music is a sensational vehicle to transmit the most necessary values in our students and in society in general.
As young leaders of tomorrow, it is essential that young people are informed and committed to the global vision of the future. For this reason, it is fundamental to raise awareness about the common artistic and cultural roots that unite us and the important historical facts that have shaped the differences that diversify us as citizens of this world. “Music connects Europe” aimed, and still does, to build a discussion platform and create the conditions for active engagement.
This was the calendar of the mobilities:
October 2017: meeting of coordinators and music teachers in Poland (Przygodzice).
March 2018: mobility with students in Italy (Palermo).
June 2018: mobility with students in Bulgaria (Vratsa).
October 2018: meeting of coordinators and music teachers in Latvia (Saldus).
March 2019: mobility with students in Greece (Athens).
May 2019: mobility in Spain (Cadiz).
During all the mobilities, we shared the activities programmed in the project and the students and teachers carried out those activities organized by the host country and the coordinator. After each mobility, the activities were programmed to evaluate and plan.
The participants in the mobilities were 2 teachers and 3 students from each country, who at the time of the exchange were 14-15 years old, although the programmed activities were carried out by all the students of the partner schools.
The activities were developed in this order:
Before the first Transnational Project Meeting in Poland, the activities were aimed at making the project known in schools and its surroundings and each country produced a video presenting their school and city so that the rest of the students get to know each other. A contest for the development of the project logo was held.
Before visiting Italy, students prepared a work on classical music in each of our countries. Another activity consisted in the interpretation of a piece of classical music from each country.
Before travelling to Bulgaria, students researched aspects of “urban popular music” in each country and performed a piece of this music during this mobility, together with some of their teachers.
Then, in the months before the third exchange in Greece, we focused on the traditional (folk) music in each country, searching for information and performing a song.
A typical instrument of each country was made before visiting Spain, the fourth and last mobility with students.
Coinciding with the Europe Day, May 9th (not casual, it was programmed two years before), we celebrated it in the schoolyard with all the students and teachers of the school, and all the students and teachers from the partner countries attended it. The flags of the six countries honed that day in the courtyard, next to the European Union flag with the word Erasmus + written in the middle. Everyone heard a sentence about music as a vehicle for the unity of Europe read by the students from each country in their mother tongue and in English.
A special activity was the final one, in Cádiz: the students put lyrics to a popular pop song, each country wrote a stanza in their language and the chorus was composed in English. The song was called Music Everywhere and was performed live in the auditorium of the school in Cádiz; The music was performed by 4 teachers of the school (acoustic guitar, electric bass guitar, keyboard and flamenco box). The performance was recorded and disseminated on the websites of the schools and on their social networks. It was a multinational teamwork, with students and teachers from 6 different countries, who spoke seven different languages but with a single one that united them: Music.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 122490 Eur

Project Coordinator

Fundación Educación Alternativa 1826 & Country: ES

Project Partners

• I.C. “PRINCIPESSA ELENA DI NAPOLI”
• A Arsakeio Gymnasium Psychikou
• Saldus vidusskola
• SU “Otec Paisii”
• Szkola Podstawowa im. Powstancow Wielkopolskich w Jankowie Przygodzkim