Green Evenings – Stop Talking, Start Acting Erasmus Project

Project Title

Green Evenings – Stop Talking, Start Acting

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: Creativity and culture; Social/environmental responsibility of educational institutions; Environment and climate change

Project Summary

Although our current Erasmus+ project on sustainability is a success, our students have noticed that their work has only garnered attention and accolades from interested people; the general public is only really reached when the results are presented with emotions and ‘ballyhoo’. They have learnt, theoretically and practically, that our environment is threatened and found ways to preserve it. However, while they have got ‘wiser’ and started to change things, they have also realised that no matter how many solutions they find, nothing will really change if a much larger part of the public is not ‘hooked’. Things have not really got better since 2018, so this is still true today, which has made them aware that you do not only need valid goals, good arguments, scientific presentations and logical practical solutions to succeed but also awareness, a ‘buzz’ or AIDA (attention, interest, desire, action). Our students have realised that in order to reach people’s minds, you will have to touch their hearts in some way. Thus, our students want to take their results and know-how from our current project and move it from a cognitive, practical approach towards sustainability to a creative, interdisciplinary and activity-orientated one. This new approach will consist of spectacular activities revolving around the performing and fine arts and practical demonstrations, thereby involving new subjects and school clubs. The students want to reach new students, teachers, parents and other people (e.g. politicians, businesses). This will lead to a completely different appearance of our project without changing our overall goal of promoting and creating a more sustainable world. This new appearance shall lead to more people being ‘hooked’ because we will now be teaching by entertaining and practically demonstrating. instead of only lecturing and pointing fingers. This new project will be with students aged 13-15, i.e. years 7 to 9. The main part of our project is how to communicate and attract attention to our cause. We want to achieve this goal mainly through our mobility events in form of a stage show (Green Evening) and an exhibition with practical demonstrations (Marketplace of Possibilities). Each participating school will contribute to these events with the experiments, findings, acts, presentations and performances they have worked on at their schools and with their partners in the other countries in between the mobilities. The students have picked the main topics they will work and expand on and head (DK: sustainable nutrition, S: wildlife protection, NL: resource management, G: plastic-free future). They, for example, will look at food (ecological farming, vegetarian and vegan food, local food) and find out how to live a healthy, sustainable life or they will examine transportation and how we can reduce emissions while improving our health. They will work on experiments and performances that create AIDA through their presentations and not so much through facts and figures, laying the focus on the emotional aspects of the topics and not so much on the rational ones. This will create the opportunity for students to mingle, talk and exchange ideas with guests after the evening, using the ‘heart-touching’ capabilities of the Green Evening as a conversation starter to employ their skills developed in the current project. After having been entertained by experiments, show cooking, fashion shows, music and dance acts, pop-up actions, sketches, etc., which will all have a very serious scientific background in sustainability, people will be more open to the serious underlying messages. The show will come with a sustainable dinner, cooked, presented, served and explained to the guests by students. All our presentations will still be there in the future. The web pages/Twinspace will still inform people about our project. They will therefore always serve as a beacon to be active, creative and do something ‘big’ to make our world more sustainable. If we can make more people listen to our ideas and ideals and have them act as multipliers, a lot more has been achieved than with our current project, although it has been very successful. And with these new allies behind us we will be able to start and implement even more changes at our schools and communities, for which the support sometimes is lacklustre. The project will continue to develop a deeper understanding and awareness of the surrounding environment amongst all participants and it will raise the education on sustainability at our schools to a higher standard of quality, because students will see that activism does not only include knowledge but also AIDA. Furthermore, youth exchanges are an excellent opportunity for young people to experience different cultures and traditions and to improve language skills. All co-operations and some of the lessons will continue as part of the school curriculum even after the conclusion of the project (e.g. in Germany, Denmark and Sweden).

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 129160 Eur

Project Coordinator

Sibylla-Merian-Gymnasium & Country: DE

Project Partners

• Carmelcollege Emmen
• Tårnborg Skole
• Läredaskolan