Places of shared memory to build a European identity Erasmus Project

Project Title

Places of shared memory to build a European identity

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 2020

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: EU Citizenship, EU awareness and Democracy; Creativity and culture; Pedagogy and didactics

Project Summary

For most of our students it is difficult to identify Europe because of its incompleteness and its hesitancy. Its borders are blurred and its limits are moving ; the history of its construction is chaotic. This leads to a loss of image but above all to a doubt about the value of European integration, which is seen more and more as artificial and ineffective, since we have lost sight of what lies at the origin of its creation.
This thought has brought us to reflect on European identity with our students, but also to consider that Europeans have a weak awareness of being a supranational entity whose marks and values are partly shared. We will understand them through the places of memory, « significant units of a material or an ideal kind, which the will of man or the working of time has turned into a representative symbol of any community”. (Pierre Nora)
If the project’s aim is to lead our students to grasp the idea of a common memory to build the European identity upon, in order to reach our goal we will follow a path of increasing complexity which will lead the students to think about places of memory starting from their individual condition to gradually broaden their identity horizon through several steps, from the local/regional one to the national and finally the European one. This path is divided into 4 didactic units corresponding to four steps in a systematic process of knowledge building.
The first step, « From memory to places of memory », wants to define what a place of memory is and the functions of memory in the construction of individual identity.
The second, « memory places shared by a community », wants to make the transition from the domestic dimension to a broader local and regional one, to encourage teenagers to get out of themselves and discover places of memory that belong to the community and that represent its identity, so that teenagers will become aware of being members of that community.
The third one, « Places of memory that have a history », intends to make the transition from a limited territorial setting to the State, which is beyond what is particular and also tries to have a unifying function; it aims at the understanding of the values and symbols associated to national places of memory, of the political and ideological dimension of the places of memory ; finally, it aims at the understanding that our national history is embodied in us in a shared memory coming from the combined action of communities and power.
The last step, « Towards European Places of Memory? » intends to lead students to become aware of the existence of places which, beyond national borders, embody values that are shared by a broader community, corresponding to the European reality.
Each didactic unit includes activities and phases of mobility abroad, which should result in products and concrete outputs (mind maps about personal places of memory; boxes of personal places of memory; trees of personal and shared places of memory; maps of national places of memory; videos on visited places of memory ; identity cards of national places of memory and finally journals of memory itineraries, case studies about border towns). The best ones will be included in an ebook which will complete our project.
All these activities will allow us to implement an active teaching attitude characterized by an interdisciplinary and learner-oriented approach, focused on students’ needs and interests. It is a pragmatic approach which, by putting experience at the centre of the learning process, will lead the participants in the project to think and act in the world where they live.
This is because our project has the ambitious goal to help preserve the collective memory, to help transmit the heritage, in particular by moving forward with education and formation for everybody in the field of cultural and memory heritage.
Therefore our partnership includes five high secondary schools and is associated with and two primary schools, two Faculties of Science of Education (Bordeaux and Udine) as well as with Centres for Historical Research, Archives, cultural Associations.
As regards the key theme of our project, leading to border towns and regions, the partner institutions are in key places. Udine, Aquileia, Koper and Narva are located on one side or the other of the disputed and moving borders during the Wars in the XX century in Europe. Seville was located at the border between Islam and Christianity, between the Ancient ad the New World, Bordeaux, Agen and Astaffort are in Aquitaine, a land of immigration and of reception, a disputed territory during the Hundred Years’ War.
These are all places of confrontation and exchanges which have become the emblems of the issues of a Europe that has to turn its differences into its richness… and into its future.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 154481 Eur

Project Coordinator

LICEO SCIENTIFICO MARINELLI & Country: IT

Project Partners

• Gimnazija Koper – Ginnasio Capodistria
• Narva Pähklimäe Gümnaasium
• I.E.S. Cavaleri
• Lycée Bernard Palissy