Arts and Traditions(Promoting Awareness of Cultural Traditions in Modern Settings) Erasmus Project

Project Title

Arts and Traditions(Promoting Awareness of Cultural Traditions in Modern Settings)

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 school education

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2016

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: ICT – new technologies – digital competences; New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses; Creativity and culture

Project Summary

Context/background of the project
The main aim of the project was to explore a range of arts and traditions from across Europe with the intention of improving the teaching of arts in our own schools and producing readily available practical guidance on how other schools might copy our approaches.
Number and profile of participating organisations
This project originally involved twelve primary schools (or the primary section of seven of the schools) one kindergarden and one university from 12 countries but one of the two English schools was forced to drop out after one year due to unforeseen circumstances. The Project Coordinator also left at the end of the first year and the Headteacher from the beneficiary school had to take on the coordination role to keep the project on track.
Five of the school’s had previously cooperated in a Comenius partnership and five other schools had previous, or current experience of European cooperation projects,
Our objectives were:
Developing the use and teaching of the Arts across the curriculum
Developing and adapting the use of modern communication technology
Developing shared staff professional training
Improving communication skills in foreign languages (MFL)
Promotion of an appreciation of diversity and the feeling of place in the wider community
Main Activities Undertaken
We divided the project into 6 semesters running from September to January and February to July to accommodate national differences in terms of the school year. Each semester started with a TPM at which we reviewed progress to date and established priorities and actions for school to school contacts during the upcoming semester. At each the host school also led training for all attendees on an aspect of the arts that might be a local tradition or might be a skill possessed by staff or someone from the local community with clear focus on preparing the attendees to be able to go back to their own schools and trial and evaluate the taught approach to an arts technique.
In addition we ran three short term LTTE courses for colleagues from the partnership schools to develop practice in the teaching of drama, the use of ICT in the arts and on approaches to using drama and other approaches to improve language.
We also organised two multiplier events at which the final intellectual output was planned and coordinated.
We always had plans for one single intellectual output that would be a practical guide to the teaching of arts in the primary phase but it was only at these multipliers that plans were agreed and then developed for this to be in the form of a website that was widely disseminated. The university offered their expertise in creating and then hosting this website.
Results and impact attained
All schools reported substantial improvements in the teaching of the arts in their schools as a result of their involvement in this project as shown by updated needs analysis originally completed at the start of the project. Positive feedback on the quality of the LTTE sessions was very strong and also on the vast majority of the training offered at each and every project meeting on different aspects of the teaching of the arts. The clips and photos of activity in the schools uploaded to the e-twinning site reflect the variety and the quality of outcomes from trialing these activities.
Modern communications technology was used throughout by staff to share ideas and experiences on our dedicated facebook pages and on the e-twinning site. The website structure and contents were mostly prepared at the second multiplier in January 2019 and the university have now completed the basic template but the content within the pages has not yet been completed as we envisaged.
The feedback from the LTTE on language teaching and the development of support at the meetings to complement the work of the project coordinator in helping colleagues to understand the tasks and ideas that were being discussed suggests we achieved good results in relation to this objective.
Finally at a time when The UK’s relationship with Europe is becoming so strained it has been so helpful for the beneficiary school to be able to show Europe’s human faces to its community and for partners it has been re-assuring that the desire to turn their backs on Europe is not shared by all in the UK.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 380352 Eur

Project Coordinator

Widden Primary School & Country: UK

Project Partners

• Burdur Mehmet Akif Ersoy University
• Zespol Szkolno-Przedszkolny w Lipiu
• Croix-Rouge-Primaire
• Skanör Falsterbo Montessoriskola
• Kauno Panemunes pradine mokykla
• 2nd Primary School Lavrion
• SCOALA GIMNAZIALA NR.13 BOTOSANI