La vigne au carrefour des cultures latines Erasmus Project

Project Title

La vigne au carrefour des cultures latines

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 2014

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: International cooperation, international relations, development cooperation; Creativity and culture; EU Citizenship, EU awareness and Democracy

Project Summary

The originality of « the Vineyard at the crossroads of Latin cultures » project lies in the fact that it is not only cultural, scientific and linguistic, but above all patrimonial. The idea is to envisage our shared heritages, what it is that makes us Latin, in a study of the immediate environments of the pupils from the participating schools, the vineyard. This cultural heritage enables us to link three geographically distant European regions: the West Atlantic, the Mediterranean and the eastern confines of the European Union.
The coordinating school : the Collège Victor Louis (Talence, France) was at the outset of the project. Teachers there had regularly been involved in pedagogical actions such as the European Citizenship Competition, organized by the Département de la Gironde, and three teachers were awarded a grant enabling them to travel to meet European colleagues with a view to initiating a Comenius project. The organizing team thus travelled to lasi (Romania), in November 2012. This meeting brought to the fore the natural cultural proximity between French and Romanian, both Latin languages despite the geographical distances. The presence of vineyards around both cities was an obvious centre of interest to be worked on: “So far and yet so close”. How can we reach out to others through our immediate environment?
The college d’Aversa (Italy) joined the project through eTwinning. Thus, three schools in France (Talence), Italy (Aversa) and Romania (lasi) worked together. All are urban establishments which cater to a public which is heterogeneous both in terms of levels and socio- economic backgrounds. They all work with young people in need of references and motivation. Hence the desire to have them open up to others, to transcend their differences, the distances and their representations.
Another aspect specific to the project: the annual themes which enable us to approach the different aspects of the subject gradually, but also to involve larger numbers of pupils and staff over time. Each school year has its theme: science and techniques the 1st year, arts and literature the 2nd, and finally human and social sciences the 3rd year. There is a transversal production linking all the work over the three years: the “Vino dico” a quadrilingual dictionary of wine making terms, and the annual productions: a book of photos and texts about the scenery of the vineyards, maps of the wine trade, calendar…. The annual meetings offer the possibility to enrich this work and to discover the different patrimonies first hand. The objectives have been greatly surpassed with numerous other productions added to enrich the project, adapting to the desires of the staff and partners and allowing more leeway and creativity. This is an important point as the implementation of the recent school reform in France has meant adapting the project to the new curriculum (eg: the setting up of an interdisciplinary project on wine as a globalised product)
Two meetings have been organized each year: a learning activity for the pupils and a transnational meeting, except in the third year when a learning/training activity was added for the teachers.
Generally speaking, we have observed progress in foreign languages with inhibitions lowered. For certain pupils with learning difficulties the multidisciplinary approach inherent in the project has enabled them to make progress and maintain their motivation. The aim was to guide these young people in the construction of their European citizen identity through the discovery of what bonds them to others or what makes them different. This is the primary impact of the project: to reach out to others and to raise barriers which were more numerous than those identified at the outset.
The project has also enabled the teachers to progress in their teaching practices, to discover other teaching realities. The training session on the subject of mediation in archaeology in partnership with Cap Archéo has been a keynote in the project.
Numerous cultural and institutional partners have helped, supported and publicized the project, making it ever richer. Moreover, in France and Italy this partnership was marked out when the college Victor Louis was awarded the prix du college européen de Gironde by the DAREIC and the MEBA (Maison de l’Europe Bordeaux-Aquitaine)
As a result of these meetings between the schools involved new projects for exchanges between the three partners are already emerging. Our patrimony remains a constant, with for example work on the 1st World War. Italy already has two Erasmus projects in the making.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 96205 Eur

Project Coordinator

Collège Victor Louis & Country: FR

Project Partners

• Scoala Gh.I.Bratianu
• S.M:S PASCOLI