IMagine the CITY of the Future Erasmus Project

Project Title

IMagine the CITY of the Future

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 2018

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: EU Citizenship, EU awareness and Democracy; Early School Leaving / combating failure in education; Key Competences (incl. mathematics and literacy) – basic skills

Project Summary

The main goal of our project (“Imagine the city of the future”) was to contribute to the emergence of an European citizenship. We created an European collaboration in order to imagine and then “build” together the city of tomorrow, which is a great illustration of what citizenship means : the ability to live together in a same and shared space.
First, our pupils had to imagine their ideal city of the future. Then, they had to take a more rational approach: identifying and listing the needs of the future population, before inventing and finding solutions to satisfy these needs. Their final production was a virtual model of this city of the future, on Minecraft.
There were three steps in this project :
The first one was to define and list the needs of a population, then to imagine how these needs and places would change in the future and how we will be able to satisfy these needs. This work
was done in each school partner, and we asked our pupils to write short stories and to illustrate (with drawings or photos) the city of their dreams. We asked them to imagine a name, a crest, a motto, and an anthem for their city. Each partner selected some of these works to exhibit them during each mobility. Each partner had to study the evolution of their own city (or nearby cities) through time, focusing on urban planning and architectural aspects.
The second step was to design our city of the future. Each partner worked on a specific theme, which was defined during our first mobility : energies of the future, transports of the future, new materials, waste treatment, citizenship in the city, artificial intelligence, urban planning and architecture.
The third step was to “build” our city online, on Minecraft. Each partner had to build a specific area/neighborhood of this city, according to the choices we had decided during the first meeting in Denmark.
In Amnéville, we could count on the support of our high school partner and on their digital skills to help us.
Each partner also designed different robots of the future, relating to self-driving transports and future jobs. We had planned to organize an international competition during the final meeting in Amnéville in May 2020, but we unfortunately had to do it virtually, and during a videocall, since we had to postpone this last meeting to February 2021 because of the pandemic crisis, and to reorganize this meeting as a virtual one.
The activities made throughout the project were part of the learning programs of each country, thus supporting teaching and facilitating the acquisition of skills through a pedagogical project. Many school subjects were involved: literature (science-fiction, short stories), arts (drawings, photos), history, geography, foreign languages, science and technology/ICT.
All the pupils of a same age group worked on this project (5ème and 4ème in France).
Special attention was given to the participation of pupils facing learning difficulties (cognitive or disabilities). All in all, 600 pupils were directly involved in the project and more than 5000 teenagers and their parents were impacted by it.
Three learning activities were scheduled, involving the mobility of 156 pupils and 36 staff members.
We chose to study and work on three different aspects:
– citizenship in the city
– ecology
– public transports of the future
Some experts gave conferences on these themes and we visited companies, institutions, and key places regarding architecture and urban planning, as part of pedagogical activities.
The pupils who took part to these learning activities had to present their work and experience to their classmates who stayed at home. We selected the pupils who travelled abroad according to their motivation and involvement in the project, making sure to include pupils with learning difficulties or disabilities. A large media coverage of the project was done through printed and broadcast media in each country.
Through this project, we were aiming at :
-encouraging the creativity and imagination of our pupils
– encouraging their mobility inside the European Union
– extending their basic skills and citizenship
– improving their practice of foreign languages
– increasing their digital skills by working with different media
– increasing international cooperation in our schools
Finally, this project enabled our teachers to improve their teaching practices, thanks to different exchanges throughout our collaboration on one hand, and thanks to a study of different educational methods during each mobility on the second hand. The large media coverage of our project as well as regular information given to parents in each partner school will value the European Union.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 138943,5 Eur

Project Coordinator

Collège La Source & Country: FR

Project Partners

• Rasmus Rask-Skolen
• Rigas 22. vidusskola
• The Oldershaw Academy
• Grund- und Mittelschule Dinkelscherben
• IC Angiulli De Bellis