The Experience of State Socialism Reimagined Erasmus Project

Project Title

The Experience of State Socialism Reimagined

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 youth

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2017

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: ICT – new technologies – digital competences; New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses; Open and distance learning

Project Summary

The context/background of the project:
This project addresses the lack of high quality educational material on the communist history of Eastern and Central Europe meant for an international context, coming from the principle that teaching history using film clips and primary sources through inquiry based learning also strengthens critical thinking and digital and media literacy skills. Furthermore, introducing youth outside of the former Eastern bloc to that region’s complex history decreases the sense of Otherness within the European Union that is created by maintaining a Cold War era view of the region. This project will allow the partners to developing suitable international material in cooperation with youth groups so that all may build on that experience later.
The project objectives:
1. Develop and strengthen a partnership between like-minded institutions across the former Eastern bloc
2. Gain experience developing international history-teaching materials on the communist history of the former Eastern bloc and disseminate them around youth groups – pupils, students, educators and youth workers – in order to empower these groups in media and digital literacy and communist history
3. Encourage youth participants to take part in developing these educational materials
4. Gain experience that will allow the partners to embark upon a more extensive project to create international materials addressing communist history
Number and profile of participants:
There are five main partners: the Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes in the Czech Republic; Sofia Platform in Bulgaria; Innovative Teaching Group from Slovakia; the Bosnian organization Haggadah; and Creative Teaching Group, also from the Czech Republic. The last three of those have never participated in a European project. All have access to primary sources and a dedication to developing history-teaching materials. The team will have 16 people in total, four from the Czech and Bulgarian teams and two from the Bosnian and Slovak teams. The coordinator will also be supported in administrative, financial and technical issues with experts in their institution, while some small tasks (e.g. translations) will fall to external experts.
Description of activities:
1. Hold five transnational project meetings to manage and reflect on the project and share experiences
2. Assemble groups of young people to work with the partner organizations
3. Run two rounds of piloting in each country: one for piloting their own domestic material, and one for piloting each other partner’s material
4. Use the piloting results to create a set of multilingual educational materials, all of which will be posted online on an existing educational website, Socialism Realised (www.socialismrealised.eu)
5. Have organizers and youth participants write an ongoing participatory report in the form of a blog about their experiences throughout the project
6. Disseminate these materials throughout the educational community using various tools, organize 10 multiplier events total
Methodology to be used in carrying out the project:
The project will have five phases, with a workshop before each one to plan the next and discuss the previous. The last workshop will happen with an event to bring together select youth participants from each partner country:
1. Discussing and establishing pedagogical principles
2. Finding suitable historical sources and creating lesson plans
3. Piloting the lesson plans domestically
4. Piloting the lesson plans internationally
5. Creating final domestic and international lesson plans, putting them online, disseminating them widely
Short description of the results and impact envisaged:
The partners will gain the experience of carrying out such a project and improve their methodology. The youth participants will significantly contribute to the materials’ development, engaging them in history and education. The project will produce a participatory report and a set of high quality teaching materials that address different facets of the communist experience in each country represented, all to be freely available online and ready for use anywhere.
Potential longer-term benefits of the project:
Ideally, some or all of the same partners will use this as the first step of a large, ambitious project to create an educational website containing more of the same sort of material from as many former Eastern bloc countries as possible. In addition to creating a high quality set of teaching material, giving a meaningful and educative experience to its youth participants, and documenting the process of creating international teaching material in the participatory report, this project will give us the methodology and partnerships to begin that later project, which will be a substantial undertaking and would not be possible without a base of experience.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 99955 Eur

Project Coordinator

USTAV PRO STUDIUM TOTALITNICH REZIMU & Country: CZ

Project Partners

• Fondatsiya Sofiyska Platforma
• Historical workshops – Creative Teaching Group
• Association for Supporting the Promotion of Jewish Culture, Tradition and Tourism Potentials “Haggadah”
• Innovative Teaching Group