Democracy through Drama: Cross-cultural approaches for teachers across Europe to engage young people in civic thinking Erasmus Project

Project Title

Democracy through Drama: Cross-cultural approaches for teachers across Europe to engage young people in civic thinking

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 2017

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: EU Citizenship, EU awareness and Democracy; New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses; Social dialogue

Project Summary

DemoDram’s overall aim has been to empower teachers of humanities and languages to work with young learners to explore democratic values through the use of theatre and drama in education methodologies and tools. It also aimed to facilitate the introduction of these into their teaching repertoire. The consortium originally defined the following specific objectives:
To use and offer drama in education and mimesis in education tools to teachers looking to explore and facilitate democracy and student civic engagement; to explore humanistic aspects of curricula subjects that could engage students in dialogic discourses and accelerate student agency, empathy, responsibility and the acquisition of transferable skills; to engage in knowledge transfer and exchange of pedagogical philosophies that will enable teachers to address the issue of democratic crisis and its effects on the European context; to explore a repertoire of drama forms to develop student skills essential in multi-cultural societies; to develop Open Education Resources including 4 comprehensive drama workshops available also in an e-learning format with elements available in 4 European languages; to Develop an e-learning platform with an online teachers’ training academy (MOOC) in the Open Discovery Space (ODS) platform; to develop an assessment toolkit for democratic classrooms aimed at being flexible in order to allow use in a variety of educational and cultural settings.

Here is what the project has achieved:
DemoDram has developed 5 extremely innovative intellectual outputs ready to be used and implemented by teachers in their classrooms:
A Conceptual and Methodological Framework (IO1) on how democratic spaces can be created through drama, identifying the central concepts and outlining the pedagogical approaches appropriate school classrooms (https://portal.opendiscoveryspace.eu/sites/default/files/demodrama-conceptual_and_pedagogical_framework.pdf).

A Methodological Framework (IO2) exploring the necessary groundings different and selected methods of Applied Drama and Mimesis in Education and the positive impact which these could have on the work of teachers and educators supporting young people’s development and empowerment as young European citizens (https://portal.opendiscoveryspace.eu/en/edu-object/democracy-through-drama-methodological-framework-851759)

A complete set of 28 thoroughly designed lesson plans/workshops (compiling the IO3 DemoDram Open Education Resources), offering concrete examples of how drama supports teaching in the humanities, languages and the arts through practical explorations of curricula within the classroom. It is worth mentioning here that the consortium had originally proposed to develop 4 in the bidding stage. https://portal.opendiscoveryspace.eu/en/edu-object/democracy-through-drama-open-education-resources-859476; https://portal.opendiscoveryspace.eu/en/edu-object/demodram-workshop-crossing-borders-856753; https://portal.opendiscoveryspace.eu/en/edu-object/demodram-workshop-scene-homers-iliad-856751; https://portal.opendiscoveryspace.eu/en/edu-object/create-your-own-workshop-template-and-guide-857295

A holistic online environment, the Democracy through Drama digital community in the Open Discovery Space platform incorporating a community building element with registered members; a resources section with 25 resources; a group section with 5 unique groups dedicated to particular countries and languages with elements translated and adopted for the purposes of these national contexts; an events and a blog sections. One of the most unique aspects of the ODS Democracy through Drama community is the Teachers Academy section incorporating the DemoDram MOOC with its 4 learning modules. It is also the project’s main sustainability tool. (https://portal.opendiscoveryspace.eu/en/community/democracy-through-drama-849147)

A comprehensive Civics Assessment Tool (IO5) that has been designed as a travel journal towards a democratic classroom and incorporating all aspects of Democracy through Drama approach (https://portal.opendiscoveryspace.eu/en/edu-object/your-travel-journal-odysseus-guide-navigating-your-eventful-journey-towards-democratic).

An engaging website to further promote the work of DemoDram (https://demodram.com/).

To achieve these, the project conducted a comprehensive Needs Analysis and worked with Advisory Groups of teachers in 5 countries (UK, Belgium, Greece, Italy and Hungary). The project reached over 1,170 teachers, trainee teachers, school students and educational stakeholders through its 3 MEs and the additional dissemination activities. Finally, the project has formed two important long-term partnerships with Hungary’s prestigious Örkény Theatre and Greece’s Athens Coordination Centre for Migrants and Refugees a joint structure of the Municipality of Athens, the UN Migration Agency – International Organisation for Migration and the UN High Commissioner for Refugees.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 238598,69 Eur

Project Coordinator

BIRMINGHAM CITY UNIVERSITY & Country: UK

Project Partners

• UNIVERSITA DEGLI STUDI ROMA TRE
• Heartlands Academy
• INSITE DRAMA OKTATASI, KULTURALIS ES SZOLGALTATO NONPROFIT KORLATOLT FELELOSSEGU TARSASAG
• ELLINOGERMANIKI AGOGI SCHOLI PANAGEA SAVVA AE
• KENNISCENTRUM KINDERRECHTEN