Learning to do, learning to live together and learning to be: this is real art Erasmus Project

Project Title

Learning to do, learning to live together and learning to be: this is real art

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; Overcoming skills mismatches (basic/transversal)

Project Summary

Employers and educators are facing the same issues. Although teaching methods and training contents as well as skills requirements are different according to the countries, they are confronted with the same reality: school training doesn’t meet all the employers’ needs and interpersonal skills are inadequate.
Our project:” learning to do, learning to live together and learning to be: this is real art”, involves students from vocational schools and deals with the increasing of the young’ employment potential.
The partnership consists of 4 entities: France, Germany and Italy which are diverse in terms of geography, economy and students’ profiles as well. Two partner vocational high schools are located in the Northern France, a former mining area, part of Unesco world heritage ; a high school in a spa-town in the German Bundesland of Rheiland-Palatinate which supports students from different backgrounds including refugees ; a top Italian high standard school specialised in catering and hospitality situated in the province of Chieti in the region of Abruzzo.

The project was a multidisciplinary pathway involving many subjects taught in secondary schools (such as Science, foreign languages; Humanity; management-administration; catering and hospitality; people’s care). It revolved around two themes: reinforcing key competences to avoid dropping out.

When it comes to education, talking about ‘educational and career pathways ’is now granted. In line with this concept, this project was intended to be a pathway to learning the art of living together, the art of good manners , of good food and good taste.
The initially planned programme was partly respected. The main project start-up and development activities were effectively carried out. The different stages of the project were marked by three meetings with very specific objectives.

– Germany : citizenship, democracy. LIVING TOGETHER.
– France : personal and professional knowledge. SOFT SKILLS.
– Italy : cooking that brings people together. Sustainable cooking. THE ART OF LIVING.

Each of these stages was organised according to the same scheme and process :
– Upstream management and coordination
– Overview of the situation (Inventory of the activities to be conducted)
– Identification of the activities collectively approved
– Preparation of activities and support for participants
– Assessment and remediation
– Dissemination of results
with a phase of cultural, educative and research activities then a production phase.

To this end, links have been forged with the partner schools and certain companies. After the first start-up stage in Germany, all the teams drafted a questionnaire on Soft Skills intended to establish an inventory of skills and employability conditions in the three partner countries.
After laying out the questionnaire, the participating students presented it to employers and then , made an assessment from the answers. By using this approach, it became possible to understand the importance of personal or transversal skills or interpersonal skills, which served to follow up on the next stage in France, rightly dedicated to interpersonal skills in everyday and professional life. The students were able to work on social codes, clichés, identity and became aware of each other’s cultural differences and similarities.
The professional and artistic aspect of it was demonstrated daily through the ‘practicing’ and ‘cooking together’ experiences in Italy.
These experiences and exchanges were somehow just like a mise en abyme of the topic about Soft Skills: the skills at issue were the subjects of a study but at the same time they were used for the study.
The role of the students as well as of the teachers was to share and work in collaboration before, during and after the mobilities and meetings in order to develop personal and professional transversal competences.
One of the pedagogical and interactive workshops resulted in the production of a video by a group of students with a view to acquiring skills such as cinematographic technics and autonomy in the perspective of the last meeting.
The objective of the final stage in the Netherlands was to write on site a guide to good manners by bringing all the works and results together with : the essentials of personal and professional know-how with an artistic extension through an awareness raising campaign via posters, video clips or sketches.
This last step could not take place due to the pandemic but some posters could have been be produced.
We hope to continue and maintain the partnership . This has already started through the exchange of mobilities and work placements within the framework of KA101 and 102 Erasmus + programme, which is to be followed in the years to come. Thus, teachers (job shadowing in the partner schools) and students and have been able to find work placements in companies and in the school in Italy and Germany.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 111497,48 Eur

Project Coordinator

Lycée des Métiers H.SENEZ & Country: FR

Project Partners

• Berufsbildende Schule des Landkreises Ahrweiler
• I.P.S.S.A.R. “G.MARCHITELLI”
• Lycée Professionnel JOLIOT CURIE