Catch the balance. Strategic partnership for activation adult participants in non-formal education based on the slow life idea. Erasmus Project

Project Title

Catch the balance. Strategic partnership for activation adult participants in non-formal education based on the slow life idea.

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 2018

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Cultural heritage/European Year of Cultural Heritage; Creativity and culture; Access for disadvantaged

Project Summary

The project „Catch the Balans” was dedicated to the person of „participant” and his level of activation in the field of culture and non-formal education. Using a process of exchanging good practices between the educators from the partner institutions we worked on some methods of activation adults for participation in non-formal education.
The idea for the project appeared right after the exhibition of Anna Maria Łuczak “Mindful Ersatz Life” which took place in the Punkt Odbioru Sztuki Gallery which is one of our branches. The exhibition was about going back to simple, natural pleasures in contrast to our reality fullfilled with the Internet and too many incentives pushing our brains from all around.
We have noticed that people, including our audience, have difficulty in staying focused on one task. The effect is: less energy to work on selfdevelopment, worse and worse key competences, low social, interpersonal skills, no longlasting relationships. The result is social exclusion and staying in the marginalised group of adults.
Acording to those reflections and staying focused on european priorities concerning participation of adults in non-formal education we decided that our target group will be disadvantaged adults. (disadvantaged because of some economic barriers, social exclusion, low key competences, low language skills – imigrants, problems with being overstressed and low level of selfacceptation).
As the speed of life, being overstressed and too many incentives pushing our brains are considering as reasons why adults are not participating in non-formal education, we decided to use the idea of slow life, leave behind new technologies for a while and go back to the culture heritage. During the process of creation we focused on manual way, pointing out ecology, sensorics, building a dialog and storytelling, group process. New technologies remained with us, but only as a tool to make a project activities documentation.
The following countries participated in the project: Poland (coordinator) Belgium, Romania, Germany and Austria. As part of the partnership were organized: 3 LTT meetings (Learning training teaching) focused on workshop and exchanging good practice. Between the trainings, partners implemented the developed methods on the local ground also by conducting a diagnosis among representatives of the target group. The project were involved direct participants (educators, people engaged in the project from the partner institutions) and indirect participants taking part in local activities. Around 800 persons were involved in the project.
The methodology that we adopted for the implementation of the project is based on the principle of Simon Sinek’s golden circle and active observation. In the case of working with the target group, we will use the SSM soft methodology, which was created to enable operation in more natural problem situations in which people perceive and interpret the world in their own way and evaluate it using norm and standards that do not have to be shared by others. The result of the project is to acquire or activate new audience. Also introducing methods of slow life into the offer as well as the development of creative tools for evaluation of educational activities and project progress. The material result of the project is e-brochure containing all the conclusions, examples of activities as a base for a further work on the strategy for the activation the audience. A part of it is a code of ethics for the adult educators (in order to improve the quality of activities). Our goal and at the same time the long-term result we want to achieve is to stimulate discussion and sensitize the problem of adult participation in non-formal education activities . The added value of the project was to expand language competences of educators and to build international cooperation networks.

As of November 1, 2021, the Poleski Art Center, under the name of Art Center, became by the decision of the City Council one of the branches of the newly established local government cultural institution – the Municipal Culture Zone in Łódź.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 67140,92 Eur

Project Coordinator

Miejska Strefa Kultury w Łodzi & Country: PL

Project Partners

• Asociatia Solidart
• EU WAREHOUSE
• Sprachendienst Konstanz
• UNIVERSITAET KLAGENFURT