CARING FOR DIFFERENT CULTURES IN A UNITED EUROPE
▶Summary
Our project addressed three major topics: cultural heritage, European values and identity, and creativity and arts. These topics were a perfect match to get to know the cultures of the participati...
▶Objectives
Our project addressed three major topics: cultural heritage, European values and identity, and creativity and arts. These topics were a perfect match to get to know the cultures of the participating countries. Our goal was to widen the minds of our participants and their fellow students at the different partner schools, and show them that within the European borders, we have a lot of common values, even though our cultural backgrounds can be very different. Through workshops, presentations and cultural visits, our students learned to appreciate the richness of these differences. Trough the differents project activities and assignments, the students would learn to cooperate and develop their key competences. Dealing with their own culture and traditions and presenting them to their peers will make them aware of their own nationality. On the other hand, it will also increase their interest in the cultures and traditions of their partner students. Hosting them in host families would also stimulate their communicative skills in English. It was also our goal to create international friendships between the participants.
▶Activities
During our project, we organized mobilties to the different countries of the partner schools. Each partner school selected a party of 5 to take part in each mobility, consisting of 3 students and 2 accompanying teachers. We started with a mobility to Romania from 23 to 28 April 2023 that focused on music and folklore. Besides several cultural visits, the students were involved in a photo shoot and a theatre and music performance in traditional costumes. From 22 to 27 October 2023, we organized a second mobility to Turkey, where we explored and presented legends of the different native countries. Our third mobility to Portugal took place from to 17 March to 22 March 2024, where we explored Portuguese handcraft and traditional children's games through presentations and workshops (eg. tile engraving). Our last physical meeting took place in Belgium from 21 to 26 April 2024, which focused on traditions and customs. As Brussels is also one of the cities where the European institutions are located, we visited the European Parliament with a EP delegate. She also took the time to give us an interesting presentation that linked perfectly to our poster assignment about European values. To conclude, we also oranized a final meeting online.
▶Impact
We created several publications during our project activities. Our Turkish partner created a beautiful E-legend book with all the legends that were presented by the participants. Our Romanian partner created a beautiful calendar with the results of the photo shoot in traditional Romanian costumes, as well as a video and script of the play 'Thursday fair in Beius'. As a preparation for the Belgian mobility, the students created posters based on the European values. Each country presented a poster, and after a democratic vote, the Turkish poster was elected to represent our project. This poster was offered to the European Parliament representative that welcomed us at the EP during our visit to Brussels. She was very pleased, and promised to hang the poster in her office at the European Parliament. Besides these concrete outputs, the other results are the international friendships between the participants and plans for future collaborations. Through this project, all of our lives were enriched. We had the opportunity to meet people we would not have met without this Erasmus project and we had the chance to get to know our different school systems (the challenges we face and the way we work within the educatonal field).