Popular University in Community Psychology: well being through art Erasmus Project

Project Title

Popular University in Community Psychology: well being through art

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 adult education

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2017

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses; Inclusion – equity; Health and wellbeing

Project Summary

POPULART project, using ART as a vehicle offered unique pathways to adult education for active citizenship, personal development and fulfillment. POPULART promotes human development by self-motivation for learning and therefore enhances individual skills development and the ability of each trainee to take responsibility for his own life. POPULART also strengthens the development of civil society and the society as a whole, as well as the development of democratic values. Additionally, through the Community Psychology course that POPULART offers, serves as a mean to promote the wellbeing, crisis management, multiculturalism, internationalization and global justice.

POPULART delivered a methodological framework for using arts in Popular University, and 11 interactive and multimedia courses on Community psychology through Arts. Community Psychology employs various perspectives within and outside of psychology to address issues of communities, the relationships within them, and related people’s attitudes and behaviour. Using ART as the trigger, POPULART combines disciplines which have been isolated from one another under traditional educational models.

The objectives of the project were:
-To change attitudes and stereotypes regarding adult education.
-To create a training methodology, adequate for Popular University, promoting art-based experiential learning for adult education.
-To develop ICT tools (arts database and interactive e-books authoring tool) that will help trainers to apply art-based training in the framework of POPULART and for future courses.
-To develop training material on Community Psychology in the form of e-books(using ICT), engaging adult learners through art.
-Offer lifelong learning that is accessible to all, regardless of age, vulnerability, religion and educational, cultural and economic backgrounds.

The adult participants that were involved in the training courses were:
-66 from the city of Nea Smyrni,
-43 from the city of Sant Boi, and
-27 from the city of Limassol.
The majority of the participants were low skilled and low qualified, while many of them were adults with fewer opportunities(Economic obstacles, Cultural Differences and Disability).
The total number of the participant was 136(from the 130 originally planned) but there were some slight differentiations in the numbers per country. From the 96 applied for certification and 91 received a certification.

The activities of the project included:
A0: Project Management
A1: Pedagogical framework for art based adult education
A2: Development of the ICT tools
A3: Development of the Community Psychology course in the form of e-books
A4: Training And Certification
A5: Exploitation
A6: Dissemination

TheIntellectual Outputs are:
O1: POPULART methodology
O2: Arts online database
O3: ICT Platform
O4: Art based training course on Community Psychology(11 ebooks)
O5: Certification Scheme for the Certification of Assessment
O6: Sustainability, exploitation and replication guide
During the project 2 workshops, 2 focus groups and 3 multiplier events took place for the dissemination of the project.

The particpating countries were Greece, Spain, Cyprus and UK. These include municipalities active in adult training, a University that is involved with Arts, a Software company with expertise in educational applications, a specialized company on Psychology and training, a Certification company, a company active in the training field and the Hellenic National Commission UNESCO.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 251853 Eur

Project Coordinator

DIMOS NEAS SMYRNI & Country: EL

Project Partners

• AJUNTAMENT DE SANT BOI DE LLOBREGAT
• Centre Recursos d’Iniciatives i Autocupació sl
• KYPRIAKI ETAIREIA PISTOPOIISIS LIMITED
• Hellenic National Commission UNESCO
• REAL GROUP (UK) LIMITED
• TECHNOLOGIKO PANEPISTIMIO KYPROU
• THEOFANIS ALEXANDRIDIS KAI SIA EE