Young Urban Creative Inclusive Tours Erasmus Project

Project Title

Young Urban Creative Inclusive Tours

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 : Partnerships for Creativity

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2020

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Disabilities – special needs; Creativity and culture

Project Summary

In a two years project four organisations from Belgium, Germany, Italy and Turkey exchange on god practices of creative ways of making historical, architectural and cultural urban heritage more inclusive, interactive and so accessible for young people with handicap mainly visually impaired persons (following called VIP).

The context/background of the planned project is that young people with sight loss want to move around in cities independently and have an autonomous own access to the structure of buildings and cities in their historical, cultural and architectural meaning. Guided tours through cities are widely not accessible for visually impaired persons neither live tours nor online tours via app or internet. Furthermore, such tours are often not arranged for the target group of young people in being interactive and multisensory.

The missing points are:
– Support in mobility and navigation
– Access to places that are highly interesting for many senses like hearing, touching, smelling and tasting
– Descriptions of visible elements in cities like buildings, squares and streets – Additional tactile material like models and maps

The objectives of the project are:
– People with sight loss name their needs in getting access to urban cultural heritage.
– City guides get experiences in guiding visually impaired people through cities.
– New ways of multi-sensory and interactive inclusive city tours are experienced by creative mangers of adoption the cultura heritage of cities.
– In four European countries eight city tours with blind and partially sighted persons are made up by creative methods, experienced and evaluated.
– Guidelines for city guides are drafted to guide in a creative and inclusive way making the tours accessible for visual impaired persons.
– Four city tours with GPS data and audio-recordings of descriptions are published

The activities of the project are:
– Partners exchange experiences in city tours with visual impaired persons.
– Visually impaired people name their needs in access to urban heritage in a Europe wide spread questionary. The results will be evaluated and published.
– The project partners meet in the project countries for learning activities to create and experience guided tour – two in each country – and evaluate them. In a creative process they conceptulice multi-senory inclusive tours with the aspects: access to cultural heritage by seeing, hearing, touching, smelling and tasting; understanding the past in acting; audio-descriptions; additionally support in mobility for blind and partially sighted people.
– In each partner country one tour will be recorded in its GPS data and in audio format of the descriptions that are given.
– The so created tours will be published online. So it will be tested, if such a form of access to city tours is accessible for people – specially with visua impairment.
– A guideline will be drafted about the creative process how to make inclusive and accessible multisensory city tours not only for visually impaired but for all people.

The activities and participants are:
– 6-12/2021: research on needs of young people with sight loss on their needs concerning city tours – Europe-wide 200 participants
– 02/2022: meeting in Berlin: evaluation of the researches done, creating and experiencing two multisensory and inclusive guided city tours – 5 participants of each partner country, 10 additional participants from Germany
– 5/2022: meeting in Istanbul: first overview of guidelines for accessible and inclusive guided tours (in museums, nature parks etc., creating and experiencing two multisensory and inclusive guided city tours – 5 participants of each partner country, 10 additional participants from Turkey
– 10/2022: meeting in Liège: first draft of guidelines for accessible and inclusive guided city tours, creating and experiencing two multisensory and inclusive guided city tours – 5 participants of each partner country, 10 additional participants from Belgium
– 3/2023: meeting in Florence: finalising draft of guidelines for multisensory and inclusive guided city tours, creating and experiencing two multisensory and inclusive guided city tours, conference on accessible tourism for exchange of practices collected in the project – 8 participants of each partner country, 10 additional participants from Italy

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 129442,5 Eur

Project Coordinator

Deutscher Blinden- und Sehbehindertenverband e. V. & Country: DE

Project Partners

• Egitimde Gorme Engelliler Dernegi
• Unione Italiana Ciechi ed Ipovedenti Sezione Provinciale di Firenze
• VISUALLY IMPAIRED EDUCATION AND WORK SUPPORT INTERNATIONAL AISBL