Identity and Innovation Erasmus Project

Project Title

Identity and Innovation

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 : Partnerships for Creativity

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2020

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: ICT – new technologies – digital competences; Creativity and culture; Social/environmental responsibility of educational institutions

Project Summary

The project ‘Identity and Innovation’ (I²) is a cooperation between 2 secondary schools, 2 educational heritage service providers and 2 networking organisations in the field of cultural heritage from Belgium the UK and Italy. It is aimed at developing a participative trajectory to create an integrated vision and creative solutions for a future-oriented innovation in European education enforcing at the same time its roots and making visible its identity.

The involved partners share the desire to seek a balance between the historic value of educational heritage and the need to create innovative surroundings for schools. These days, they often result in rather sterile environments that diminish the identity and atmosphere of the historic buildings. This is a project to counter this evolution and look for best practice solutions to solve the problems related to this topic.

In this project, the participants will especially learn from each other: educational experts will develop new ways of learning and to adapt their learning environment, heritage experts will make the rich variety of school heritage more visible and used in schools. They will learn to use it in a more creative, often digitalized, way in classrooms and want it to be more appreciated because of its instrumental and intrinsic value. This will include making buildings and surrounding landscapes more sustainable and adapting them to ameliorate the well-being and the quality of living at schools.

To achieve these goals, the partners will organise three round table networking events, in Italy, the UK and Belgium. At these events, they will develop new insights through this cross-sectoral and cross-national exchange of views. They will exchange good practices and use these as a basis to develop some principles and guidelines to put the integrated approach into practice.

In two learning activities, also small groups of pupils will get into contact with school heritage from their own and from other schools. They attend workshops by experts on innovation of education, educational heritage, creative and digital tools to work on oral and visual identity. They will develop their own examples and present these to a panel of experts.

The methodology that will be used at the round tables with the experts and the learners is based on three different elements. Firstly, Design Thinking will be used, more specifically the Double Diamond Design model. Next to that also Evidence based learning (EBL) will help us to use facts and reality as a basis to depart from. And finally, we will work with small scale professional learning communities (PLC’s) to discuss reality and compare it to other practices or theories.

The results of this project are two-fold. On the one hand we aim especially at an increase of skills and competences or the involved participants and organisations: they will learn how to deal with educational heritage in innovative ways, yet at the same time, preserving their historic value. The multidisciplinary and international angles of this project will also enable them to work on their networking capacities, cooperation skills and it will help them to see the broader picture.

Next to these intangible results, we also aim at some small scale tangible results:
– An innovative, culturally rooted and sustainable vision on the integration and strengthening of heritage learning in schools and vice versa
– An inspiration guide containing principles, guidelines and good practice examples
– A number of educational packages/guides for teachers to implement projects of intercultural nature, combining historical knowledge and
methodology with arts and new technologies.
– An action plan for cultural organizations and schools who want to set up a similar co-creative trajectory.

In the long term, we want to improve the interaction between the different stakeholders and create environments that are not only historically valuable, but also excellent examples of innovative teaching. Because, as Theodore Roosevelt already said it “The more you know about the past, the better prepared you are for the future.”

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 78930 Eur

Project Coordinator

Heilig Hartinstituut Pedagogische Humaniora & Country: BE

Project Partners

• Cultureel Erfgoed Annuntiaten Heverlee vzw
• UNIVERSITA DEGLI STUDI DI MACERATA
• European Historic Houses
• The Thomas Cowley High School
• PHOTOCONSORTIUM International Consortium for Photographic Heritage
• Harlaxton College