Oriented towards cultural heritage and inclusion from a European viewpoint Erasmus Project

Project Title

Oriented towards cultural heritage and inclusion from a European viewpoint

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: Cultural heritage/European Year of Cultural Heritage; ICT – new technologies – digital competences; Inclusion – equity

Project Summary

“Oriented towards cultural heritage and inclusion from a European viewpoint” (OPTIME) was a transnational multilingual project designed by four schools within the framework of ET2020, the European Year of Cultural Heritage and the Paris Declaration.
The general goal of our project was to create a network of schools for cooperation and exchange of good practices, which allowed us to develop a project-based learning on the subject of European cultural heritage, with social inclusion as a cross-cutting topic.Thus, we have strengthened our European dimension and the ability to cope with new challenges.
Our partnership included four secondary schools from Spain, Italy, Bulgaria and Austria. Participating students were between 15 and 18 years of age.
We believe that knowledge and appreciation of our shared and diverse cultural heritage helps us boost intercultural dialogue and social inclusion in our education communities. Our socio-cultural and economic backgrounds were very diverse: in Spain,Poio is a small coastal town in the countryside; then, Reggio Calabria is a middle-sized city in Southern Italy; Sofia is a capital in Eastern Europe; and, finally, Vienna, another capital city in Central Europe.
Our motivation was the knowledge of and commitment towards the tangible and intangible cultural heritage, which we understand as a fundamental resource for economic growth, employment and social inclusion. It was therefore a subject of great educational value.
Moreover, our project sought to boost social inclusion, focusing on the fight against discrimination, segregation, xenophobia, school bullying and violence.
Other goals were to improve our students’ social, civic and intercultural competence, together with their linguistic competence, both in their mother tongues and foreign languages.
We also worked with digital competence and promoted the entrepreneurship and employability of our students, in order to facilitate their access to the job market at the European level.
Our schools reinforced their transnational cooperation capabilities by sharing ideas, practices and learning methods in a European context.
We carried out three Transnational activities consisting of short-term exchanges of groups of students. A fourth exchange visit was foreseen for April 2020, but couldn’t be carried out due to the COVID.
During these exchanges, we organized: workshops on conservation and restoration of cultural heritage, volunteering on heritage preservation; workshops on inclusion and integration, peer mediation at school; workshops on ICTs, entrepreneurship and vocational guidance.
Other seminars,conferences and visits to cultural heritage sites were foreseen as well. In the interim phases, each school organized workshops for the dissemination of the transnational activities, conferences and meetings for the development of the project and the elaboration of our final results.
We worked on an eTwinning project and used Twinspace to work online in between the exchanges. The project was awarded both the National and European Quality Labels in all four countries.
The methodology for our activities was active and participatory: peer learning, accessible inclusive activities, promoting solidarity, where students taught each other (learning by doing). We sought creative formulae for our activities and collective outcomes. This included workshops with digital simulations and project-based learning.
We encouraged participation of external actors at the local and regional level, in order to enrich our European cooperation network.
As concrete results, we got: a website, Twinspace, documentaries, reports, ebooks, manuals, leaflets, interactive maps.
As strategic results, we have had an increase in the students’ awareness about conservation and sustainability of the cultural heritage, as well as about their role to avoid confrontations between different regions.
We promoted social inclusion, development of cultural awareness and intercultural dialogue, improvements in the students’ competences through non-formal and informal education, more entrepreneurship and employability in the European job market.
The impact of our project lay in: raising awareness about our tangible and intangible cultural heritage; improving intercultural communication, tolerance, critical thinking and participation; improvement of academic excellence and professional opportunities for the students at the European level, including students that come from a disadvantaged background.
The long-term benefits were as follows: our final outcomes, hosted in our website and Twinspace, will be used as study materials at European schools, since they were be produced not only in our mother tongues but also in Spanish and/or English language versions. Additionally, teachers and schools also benefited from professional development, exchange of good practices, greater visibility of the schools, improved working capacities and larger impact of their areas of influence.

Project Website

http://erasmusoptime.blogspot.com/

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 103061,51 Eur

Project Coordinator

INSTITUTO DE EDUCACIÓN SECUNDARIO DE POIO & Country: ES

Project Partners

• Istituto Tecnico Statale per il settore economico “Raffaele Piria-Ferraris/Da Empoli”
• 164 Gimnazia s prepodavane na ispanski ezik “Miguel de Cervantes”
• Bernoulligymnasium