Approaching the social and educational value of World Heritage Sites from school Erasmus Project

Project Title

Approaching the social and educational value of World Heritage Sites from school

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 2020

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Social/environmental responsibility of educational institutions; Creativity and culture; Civic engagement / responsible citizenship

Project Summary

Cultural heritage shapes our identities and everyday lives. It surrounds us in Europe’s towns and cities. It is not only found in literature, art and objects, but also in the crafts we learn from our ancestors, the stories we tell to our children, the food we enjoy in company and the films we watch and recognize ourselves in.
This project is proposed in order to promote the enjoyment, knowledge and understanding of historical, artistic or ethnographic values of cultural assets by students, teachers and the entire educational community.
Based on this, the most important recognition as a cultural heritage is to be granted by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site.
In this sense, from IES Francisco de los Cobos, located within the monumental area of Úbeda, a city included in the World Heritage Sites list, we consider crucial for the whole educational community (including students, teachers, families and environment) to feel the cultural, historical and artistic Heritage as own.
However, it has been surprising to see the ignorance that the most of students have of what means to be a World Heritage Site and the value that these places have for human communities. Therefore, facing this need will be the main aim on this project. This need has been detected in partner schools too. This project is important for us, because it allows to know the Heritage as an essential part of themselves.
This project should offer all of us the possibility to assume that our identity derives from heritage references that explain what we are, why we have become this way and how we relate to others. In addition, the existence of human communities, including educational communities, who know it, live it and feel it as their own, is considered indivisible from this conception of Heritage.
For this reason, schools located in World Heritage Sites have been selected as partners. The partner schools are located in Istanbul, Paris, Warsaw, Cefalù and Úbeda. They all share the idea that there is an important relationship between Heritage and education. The joint work of schools located in 5 World Heritage sites, together with their respective educational communities, aims to facilitate the critical and reflective knowledge of the Heritage; promotes values related to the defense of European cultural diversity; and enhances sociocultural empathy.

The objectives pursued by this project are as follows:
-Objectives related to horizontal priority “Social and educational value of European cultural heritage”
*Enhancing the protection and conservation of Heritage through Education (objective for school)
*Encouraging Heritage research (objective for teachers and students)
*To promote the development of critical attitudes on the state of conservation of the European cultural heritage (objective for students)
-Objectives related to “Common values, civic engagement and participation”:
*Enhancing communication between cultural managers and educators (objective for school and teachers)
*Contribute elements that promote curiosity and knowledge-seeking (objective for students)
-Objectives related to “Reinforcing the development of key competencies”
*Deepen the use of new learning methodologies (objective for students)
It’s important at this point to say that working through Interactive Groups and Dialogic Gatherings encourage the creativity of students in an innovative learning environment using active methodologies, which develop key competences in students. Those are Successful Educational Actions in Learning Communities, identified in the Programme of the European Commission “INCLUD-ED” such as those that contributed most to improve educational results and coexistence in the schools.

Finally, and related to the concrete results of this project, we can define:
-Intangible results: development of critical awareness about protection of heritage; reinforcement the feeling of belonging to an intercultural entity such as the European Union; development of teamwork and cooperative learning among students.
-Tangible results: presentations and researches about the UNESCO and the main elements of material and inmaterial heritage in participating cities; creation of touristic routes with QR codes giving access to videos on YouTube describing the main monuments in the cities.
-Intermediate results: presentations and researches about heritage can be considered as intermediate results, because they are going to be done for each mobility.
-Final results: planning routes through the monuments of each city, using QR codes that will link to YouTube videos where students will explain those monuments and other elements of non-tangible heritage, such as legends, etc.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 155867 Eur

Project Coordinator

IES Francisco de los Cobos & Country: ES

Project Partners

• ISTITUTO COMPRENSIVO NICOLA BOTTA
• ISTANBUL BESIKTAS BILIM VE SANAT MERKEZI
• Szkola Podstawowa Nr 336 im Janka Bytnara Rudego
• collège Pierre MENDES FRANCE