“The war to end all wars? The First World War in a European theatre of peace” Erasmus Project

Project Title

“The war to end all wars? The First World War in a European theatre of peace”

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 Schools Only

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2016

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Creativity and culture; Intercultural/intergenerational education and (lifelong)learning; EU Citizenship, EU awareness and Democracy

Project Summary

At the time of submitting the application for funding from Erasmus+ for this project, we wrote the following as our opening sentences: “Looking at the news every day, we realize that peace in the world is a rare value and that after a period of peace since 1945 Europe now has to face the consequences of international conflicts and wars directly with the refugees streaming into our continent. This flow of refugees provokes one of the most serious conflicts between European countries since the beginning of European cooperation.” It is powerful and sobering that nearly three years later how prophetic those words have proved to be. If anything, the situation is now more pressing and potentially tense, and therefore the worth of our endeavour funded by Erasmus+ has proved to be all the more important.
This project has proven significant at the time of the centenary of the WWI in that we have brought three schools from countries of former enemies in that ‘Great War’. Students from Germany, France and UK gained a multinational perspective on the historical as well as contemporary matters. The aim of the project we expressed as “to learn from history to value European cooperation as integral part of peace and prosperity.” We evaluate much has been achieved towards this aspiration, which against the unanticipated backdrop of Brexit has proved to be all the more pertinent.
We have have built successfully on a previous project between Werdenfels-Gymnasium Garmisch-Partenkirchen and Lycée Ozanam Lille about „young citizens in WWI“, and one by Bay House School in Gosport about Gallipoli. These were showcased at the „Eurovision 1914“ in Oberhausen.
This new project has succeeded in its objective to develop a theatre piece about the First World War and about the consequences the young people can draw from this today. Students were involved from the beginning, creating the new theatre piece, supported by professional artists from the Residenztheater in Munich, the Compagnie Éolisonge in Lille and a Drama teacher from Gosport. The students worked in multi-national groups carrying out research at the battlefields and museums of Northern France (including La Somme, les Flanders, Ypres and Peronne). They also visited the beaches used for the D-Day Landings near Portsmouth, the Imperial War Museum in London and the Marshall Centre in GAP. A particularly poignant activity was when the students in a group of one German, one French and one English young person together cleaned the grave of a fallen soldier at one of the war cemeteries. In going this, they kept the question in mind, why the ‘great’ war was not the war to end all wars, and devised their theatre scenes using the evidence and data from their research. The students reflected much on what they learned and, with the help of the professional artistes, discovered ways to express their findings, thoughts and emotions through the medium of drama, dance and song.
As a result they created their own multilingual theatre piece. The process involved them spending a week living in each other’s houses as the project was structured over the two years with time spent in each town. On the second occasions of time spent in each country, the work was to finalise the production and to perform it. The Premiere was at the National Theatre of Bavaria in Munich. The theatre piece then toured to GAP, Lille, Amiens and Gosport. There were nine performances in total to an audience internationally of nearly 2000 persons. The project’s website has had over 6000 followers and the project was reported by the local media in each of the places of the performances, with articles in local newspapers and interviews on local radio. A process of evaluation has been maintained throughout the duration of the project using the OFAJ/DFJW online survey tool, professional academic researchers from the University of Saarbrücken and the Residenztheater surveying students’ opinions. We also monitored the activity of the project with regular meeting of the teacher-leaders.
We always knew how rich an experience this would be for our students in our schools. We saw them mature and we could not have asked for more in how much their confidence grew and their thinking deepened about complex multi-international matters. However, we have been amazed by the impact of the project more widely. The benefit to each school has been greater than just the students involved in the project, as was the experience for their families hosting European students on more than one occasion: this produced an engagement by the parents that was extraordinary and unexperienced by us on previous exchange projects. Finally the contribution made to raising awareness in our communities was more significant than we had imagined. The feedback from audiences who saw the performances has been astonishing. It has proved that learning through the medium of theatre can have a long term benefit for promoting the message of European collaboration.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 66075 Eur

Project Coordinator

Werdenfels-Gymnasium & Country: DE

Project Partners

• Bay House School
• Ecole Ozanam