Reducing illiteracy in jail with cultural activities Erasmus Project

Project Title

Reducing illiteracy in jail with cultural activities

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 adult education

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2019

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Pedagogy and didactics; Creativity and culture; Key Competences (incl. mathematics and literacy) – basic skills

Project Summary

According to an expert report of the European Commission in 2012, almost 75 million Europeans are illiterate: this means they do not have the necessary basic skills (reading, writing, calculation) to be autonomous in our society. And a lot of inmates are concerned by this situation. Moreover, at best, more than half of the people in jail have only achieved primary education level and don’t have a real professional qualification. Those situations obviously have many consequences, such as bad self-esteem, lack of self-confidence, great suffering, which often spill over onto the quality of the relations these people have with others and lead to social exclusion.
To avoid this situation, we organise in many European countries cultural activities in jail to give inmates the desire to learn reading and writing. We wish inmates understand that learning is still possible, whatever the way and whenever they learn.

To reduce illiteracy by promoting access to culture is enabling everyone to develop the necessary basic skills for everyday life in order to achieve a successful rehabilitation and be more autonomous in his family, professionnal and citizen life.

At a time when Europe has made illiteracy reduction one of its priorities, and works on the harmonization of penitentiary policies, it’s important to question how every European country works in the fields of access to culture and illiteracy reduction in prison and can improve the non formal learning in order to reduce, or even eliminate, social division.

And the best way to go further on the issue is to confront methods and practices used to work in those fields in different European countries. Each participant will enrich his professional practice, discover new methods that he will be able to organise in the prison he works.

This project is intended to people working in jail in the fields of access to culture and illiteracy reduction owing to non formal learning and in particular cultural activities.

We will organise 4 transnational meetings where we will share, confront ideas, practices and methods. We also will meet with social workers, teachers working in jail and question with them the efficiency of their methods and our pratices to reduce illiteracy. It will also be the opportunity to discuss with inmates with reading and writing difficulties about the efficiency of activities we propose and try to think with them about new methods.
An international conference on the issue will take place in Paris in 2021 to close this meeting series.
A synthesis report will be made after each meeting as well as proceedings of the conference

Expected impacts:
– Develop our skills on how to use cultural activities to reduce illiteracy
– Allow organisations to develop a European network of exchange of good practices to pursue collaboration
– Increase our capacity to operate at transnational level
– Initiate a process which will enable prisons to realise the importance of cultural activities for inmates and illiteracy reduction
– Develop the consultation of inmates on cultural activities we propose
– Develop the capacity of illiterated inmates to argue about a subject and give their opinion
– Try to influence, at mid- or long-term, the cultural and illiteracy reduction policies in jail in order that cultural activities become essential in the field of illiteracy reduction

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 103700 Eur

Project Coordinator

FEDERATION DES OEUVRES LAIQUES D INDRE-ET-LOIRE & Country: FR

Project Partners

• BIBLIOTECA JUDETEANA “PANAIT ISTRATI” BRAILA
• Cultiv Associação de Ideias para a Cultura e Cidadania