An Italian immigrant’s journey to France Erasmus Project

Project Title

An Italian immigrant’s journey to France

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: Cultural heritage/European Year of Cultural Heritage; Creativity and culture; EU Citizenship, EU awareness and Democracy

Project Summary

Three schools are involved in this project. The lycée Saint Exupéry from Fameck, The collège Hurlevent from Hayange, two secondary schools from Moselle in Grand Est region, France ; and the Istituto Carafa Giustiniani, a secondary school from the Benevento province in region Campania in southern Italy.

It was a two school years project, which aimed at analysing the bonds between Italy and France (more particularly the Lorraine region, which has been home to many Italian immigrants for decades) through an Italian immigrant’s life story, set after the Second World War. To do so we created a comic book to show a young Italian man’s journey as he decides to emigrate to France. With the students from the first year, we explored his motivations and dreams, his journey, his life and work in France. With the students from the second year, we wrote the second part of the story which takes place several decades later. The main character takes his grandson for a trip to Italy. The grandson will therefore discover the land of his ancestors. This arouses curiosity and interest for his family history and for he country where his grandfather was born.

For each year the work modalities were very similar. Each school first worked on a synopsis. Then during the first mobility we shared our ideas. After that, we wrote the scenario of the comic book in groups of French and Italian students and we cut the scenario in different chapters. Between the two mobilities we worked on the story-board of the comic book. Finally when we met for the second mobility we shared our story-boards, then we made the drawings, wrote and translated the texts. This organisation has been impacted be the COVID-19 crisis. Indeed we couldn’t realise the second mobility to Italy. All the final part of the drawing work had to be done remotely, which was very complicated. Moreover the students often had to stay home as schools were closed, so they could not communicate as we would have liked. But we managed to finish the job and publish our comic book.

Our goal was to highlight Europe’s cultural heritage and exchanges and to further explore questions which are still relevant today. The 113 students (60 from France and 53 from Italy) who took part of this project over two years embodied the values of the European Union. Moreover, their contribution allowed them to practice and develop communication skills, such as proficiency and fluency in a foreign language, as well as writing skills, by studying and using the codes of a specific literary form and genre (i.e. comic books). The mobilities to France and the mobility to Italy gave them the opportunity to share their research work and to enrich the project thanks to the workshops during which the three schools worked together. All the steps of the creation of our comic book were guided by professional writer and drawer Grégory Lê who accompanied the students both in person and by distance.

At the end of the program, we managed to achieve our main goal as a 52 pages comic book in French and in Italian (which means a total of 104 pages) is currently being printed. Each student will own a copy of the comic book which the group will have spent two years making.
The French and Italian students got deeply involved in this project. We think they gained in maturity and self-confidence. They progressed in foreign language and had the opportunity to discover a new culture and another way of living. We do hope these are benefits which will contribute to make them open-minded and curious European citizens.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 83193 Eur

Project Coordinator

Lycée Saint-Exupéry & Country: FR

Project Partners

• collège Hurlevent
• IIS Carafa Giustiniani