La ville Erasmus Erasmus Project

Project Title

La ville Erasmus

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 Schools Only

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2016

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: ICT – new technologies – digital competences; Early School Leaving / combating failure in education; EU Citizenship, EU awareness and Democracy

Project Summary

“La Ville Erasmus” is a project to create a virtual city in its existence, but as real as possible in its functioning. Our objective was to encourage our students to deepen their civic integration in the city and its management, in society and in Europe, through the creation of a multinational European city, virtual in its existence, but very real in its functioning. Today’s young people will be tomorrow’s citizens, mainly in an urban setting.

The Project “La ville Erasmus” was a diachronic trip through the process of building a city.

In concrete terms, the students met elected representatives, association leaders and urbanization experts, and also carried out Internet research in order to understand how a city works, the issues related to solidarity, tolerance, and the integration of individuals and social groups in their diversity (disabled, young people, seniors, migrants, the marginal…).
In the same way, they also discovered sustainable urban initiatives in terms of the environment, public transport, eco-construction, collaborative sharing, etc. (Pic au vent, cities in transition, green city, Tivoli project…)
The reflection then took place at the political level (who to govern? What kind of decisions?), at the economic level (how to manage services and industrialization?), at the social level (where to place schools ? Homes? hospitals?), as well as at the cultural level (what place for culture?).

The project “La Ville Erasmus” was also a synchronic trip through all the forces that, crossing each other, energize the cities.

Elections have been held to select those who will govern this ideal idea. Coming from all four nationalities, these young people chose their “mayor” and 2 municipal councillors by nationality. Citizenship has actively participated in all urban decisions, for example, how to divide up the spaces to build houses on the pristine world of Minecraft, or on who would have built the city’s infrastructure and services. These exchanges of multinational experiences, often using digital tools (Skype, Messenger…) have enabled them to develop their sense of responsibility, teamwork, intercultural understanding, decision-making, in other words active citizenship. Every citizen of Utopia has received an identity card, the symbol that he or she is both an actor and a resident of the city.

The following issue was based on the following axis of reflection: “How to find your place in the urban melting pot, combining individual desires and projects with social needs and constraints? »
City dwellers, in groups or individually, were invited to project themselves into the city, to imagine their life in Utopia through storytelling and artistic or business projects (video, photos, PowerPoint, tutorial), put to the online vote by other citizens. In the same vein, they have materialized their ideal city in models.

In other words, these exchanges of experience have enabled them to develop their sense of responsibility, teamwork, intercultural understanding, decision-making, in other words active citizenship: all skills used in the creation of municipal structures and in the management of the City services they have thus created and which they have named “Utopia”.

All these reflections took on a concrete colour in the virtual construction of the Utopia city in the world of Minecraft. Everyone was able to build their ideal house (within the limits of the game) they collaborated to build a large part of the city’s infrastructure: roads, bridges, hospital, school, forum…

They had to react collaboratively to urban problems: the Black Council (a strange hidden council) threw 3 disruptions (climatic, technological and environmental) at them, during which elected officials had to react and helped other citizens solve the problems presented and consider ways of preventing them

Finally, an association (Terra-Utopia) of young city dwellers (and not so young) has been created to perpetuate the dynamics of the “Erasmus City”. For if the etymology of the word “Utopia” means “place from nowhere”, the city we have created does indeed exist in minds and hearts, and the desire is great to see it incarnated in a “place somewhere” in Europe…

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 122205 Eur

Project Coordinator

Lycee professionnel Rene COUZINET & Country: FR

Project Partners

• Collège de la lys
• Liceul Teoretic Carei
• IPSEOA CAVALCANTI