Promoting Active Citizenship

A main task in adult education is to enhance civic engagement and participation by adult education based on common European values. Within PROMOCITI we wanted to combine existing knowledge and practical know-how of the experienced actors with an activating impulse for institutions and their pedagogues which until now focuses more on designing programmes for interested learners that are offered in the folk high schools/in the education houses. The project confirmed our assumption that the promotion of active citizenship is a "by-product" of the schools. We wanted to focus on new approaches to active citizenship from the outset and promote the schools' clear commitment to Active Citizenship. With the various modules, we wanted to address teachers and active citizens in the Folk High School environment. There was a great need to explore the possibilities of attracting new (younger) people as active citizens and how to network intelligently (also across Europe) in the (mainly rural) areas of the Folk High Schools. Another need we addressed was digital skills to promote Active Citizenship, Covid helped here to educate people really fast. One need that arose from this was to look at "digital active citizenship" and its possibilities.

PROMOCITI´S two intellectual outputs cover at first a specific engrossed survey of the role and performance of adult education institutions like folk high schools or similar ones within the field of active citizenship (including key success factors and hinderances). The main output will be a theoretically developed and twofold tested curriculum for pedagogical staff with special emphasis on designing and facilitating hybrid workshops and creating digital stories as method for documentation. For the pedagogical staff of folk high schools and similar organisation it is crucial - to accept active citizenship as a main challenge for their future work, - to gain competence in how to initiate and facilitate processes and/or activities in civic participation and - to achieve practical experience by organizing and facilitating pilot workshops with local/regional citizens (linked by digital technology with other sites in the partner countries).

15 persons of the target group were involved in the train-the-trainer seminar, modules 1+2, which is one part of the final curriculum´s "market test". They built online peer groups to collaborate in the development of regional pilot workshops (see below). The second part of this "market test" was to evaluate the transferability of the curriculum to concrete situations of citizens´ involvement. For active citizens of the involved partner countries PROMOCITI there was the unique chance not only to collaborate on local level with an adult education institute but also to discuss, think and work together with other engaged citizens in the partner countries - linked by digital software (mostly by Zoom) without the need or burden to travel hundreds of kilometers and spend a few days to be able to do so. Therefore we explored common European values in basic democracy not only in adult education but also in the way different partners and countries promote Active Citizenship. Some 150 citizens participated in these pilot workshops (approx.. 10 per pilotworkshop). In this sense PROMOCITI raised awareness and understanding for topics present in society in different European countries from North to South like women rights, support for artists in rural areas, energy cooperatives or how to be a local leader. This enhanced a common European understanding of themes and helped to implement ideas and experiences from other countries´ regional activities. All the knowledge gained in the process flowed into IO2 “Promoting Active Citizenship by Adult Education (Promociti) - A Curriculum for Education Managers”. The function of IO 1 “Folk High Schools and Active Citizenship in Europe” was not only to cover the current status of the promotion of Active Citizenship in Folk High Schools and to present opportunities and challenges. The interviews with 25 managers of the institutions throughout Europe often led to an internal process of reflection and readjustment in the respective institutions. The four multiplier events stimulated very intensive discussions in the area of active citizenship. The approach of Digital Active Citizenship, which we introduced at two of the four events (Austria and Germany), was particularly polarising. The multiplier events gave the project team the opportunity to present the results, but the networking potential was much more important. At all four events, employees of Folk High Schools did not remain among themselves, but were actively confronted with the needs of active citizens. Another planned activity was a multimedia manual for hybrid video meetings including three online workshops on this issue. Due to the Covid pandemic, broad sections of the population are now able to hold hybrid and digital meetings. This was not yet the case when the application was submitted. During LTTA1, however, we found out with the participants that the topic of Digital Active Citizenship (DAC) raises major questions. An imprecise definition of digitality was a recurring problem. But there were also heated discussions between different age groups as to whether Active Citizenship in the digital world leads to ‘real’ empowerment. The impulse paper is intended to help Folk High Schools and adult education to recognize why Digital Active Citizenship is important and where there are points of contact. There is also a small guide to help Folk High Schools get involved in promoting DAC.

The resulted impact is not only allocated to organizational or local level (gaining competence in the field of Active Citizenship, building local networks for grassroot level activities) but extend nationally by inspiring more and more AE institutes to integrate Active Citizenship into their portfolios and education programmes. The fact that all project partners are (embedded in) roof organizations was a very valuable issue and a good starting position for influencing a lot of folk high schools and other (similiar) organisations involved in adult education. In general the participating organisations – and finally all other interested ones - received a variety of impulses for the development of their own organisation´s portfolio and position as partner for civic participation. So the work on PROMOCITI still has a lot of sustainable impact on the future performance of all partner institutions and their related networks. In both cases, TTT-modules and Multiplier Events, the importance of personal interaction to spread the word about the project became evident. Those two types of activities helped to motivate pedagogues to increasingly include the topic of "Active Citizenship" in their own educational programs and considerations. They learned about challenges and success factors for Active Citizenship. Plus, they got to know the possibilities of Active Citizenship in the digital age. This last point was very important considering that digitalization still seems to develop slowly in a lot of educational institutions. Through the Multiplier Events a greater number of various Folk High Schools got actively engaged with the topic of Active Citizenship. During these events the participants were away from their daily tasks and had time and space to reflect on the topic. Here, the project team managed to give a great variety of impulses, ideas and information about the project. Exchange of cross-border good practice examples through the Pilot Workshops done by the TTT-participants. This was really a great way to bring various nations together. 150 participants, which were (not yet) active in the local communities of the TtT-participants could have been reached. The written results IO 1, IO 2 and the impuls paper on Digital Active Citizenship are intelligent and practical guides for Folk High Schools who want to expand their involvement in the field, but also for those who have no experience in the field and want to develop it. They are the first publications in the narrow sense of Active Citizenship and Folk High Schools and especially Digital Active Citizenship.