Vertical Plant Life Erasmus Project

Project Title

Vertical Plant Life

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 vocational education and training

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2015

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Environment and climate change; New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses

Project Summary

Due to demographic changes it is foreseen that the number of inhabitants in urban environments will increase to 80% until 2050. Urban areas are therefore the places in which environmental problems most affect the day-to-day life of Europe’s citizens. Green spaces in urban areas have significant potential to improve the quality of life of city and town dwellers, the urban environment and urban sustainability.
The concept of green architecture enables the establishment of various green spaces in urban areas including vertical gardening by using outdoor and indoor green vertical walls which can be built up at the walls of the concrete buildings, buildings interior, fences and other surfaces adequate for the cultivation of ornamental plants, vegetables, fruits, herbs, berries. Setting up a green vertical walls is a concrete passive yet effective contribution to the sustainable decreasing of energy consumption and environment protection and at the same time raise the quality of bioclimatic development of the building themselves.

How education can cope with the facts identified?
One of the basic quality requirements of vocational education and training systems is the capacity of responding and adjustment to the labour market demands.
With this in view the project » Vertical Plant Life« directly refers to the relevant items within Bruges Communiques 2011- 2020 i.e. » The transition to a green economy is a mega trend which affects needs across many different jobs and sectors. Many of the skills can be found in the existing occupations, but the labour market requires more efficient balance between developing generic green skills and specific skills. We need to improve the capacity of VET to respond the changing requirements of the green labour market. Today’s pupils and students will still be in the beginning of their career in 2020 with at least 30 years to go in their professional live, and some of them in occupations that do not exist today.”
The objectives addressed by the project “ Vertical Plant Life” lies in the very core of statements.

The general aim of the project was to provide a quality assurance approach to construction and maintenance of living walls through a European credit system recognizing skills and qualifications for vocational education and training, (VET) through European reference tools.

Objectives:
-Project partners carried out a survey of industry and academic participants.Knowledge, skills and competences were identified to determine training needs for a qualified workforce to build and maintain living walls.
-The University of Greenwich and Biotechnical Centre Naklo analyzed the results and together with Humko d.o.o. developed innovative contents for a new and innovative educational and training module for students and in-service teacher training comprising contents in the field of living walls and green infrastructure.
-The new innovative module Vertical gardening was incorporated into existing formal VET educational programmes, e.g. horticulture, gardening, landscaping, nature preservation, agriculture etc., to bridge the gap between labour market demand and existing education.
-Catalogue of knowledge, skills and competencies Vertical Gardening and Training Guide -Teachers Manual Vertical Gardening was developed
-During the project, exterior and interior living were built as teaching and learning units at three VET centres: Hadlow College (GB) Biotechnical Centre Naklo (SI) and Terra MBO Groningen (NL)
-Developed e-learning material and other project results are published and available on the VALOR EU platform and on partner organizations’ homepages.

The “Vertical Plant Life” project partnership is made of 5 partners: Biotechnical Centre Naklo (SI), University of Greenwich (GB),Humko d.o.o. (SI), Hadlow College (GB) and Terra MBO (NL), . All the partners develop their daily work in a close relation with the horticulture, landscaping, agriculture, gardening, nature preservation and renewable energy but their expertise are different and complementary thus guaranteeing the development of the synergies needed to achieve the objectives foreseen in the work plan.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 224702,03 Eur

Project Coordinator

Biotehniski center Naklo & Country: SI

Project Partners

• UNIVERSITY OF GREENWICH
• Hadlow College
• Humko, d.o.o., Bled
• AOC Terra