The project called "Colours of Europe - Migration and its cultural effects on Europe" is based on close cooperation between schools in Germany, Italy, Turkey, Ireland, Hungary, France and Portugal. All countries and schools face the challenge of migration as a daily circumstance and all schools have migrant pupils or pupils out of migrant families. Social inclusion and an increase of tolerance is regarded as an urgent matter and needs to be further and more intensely worked on. Our project aims at establishing intercultural dialogue and promote openness, mutual respect and understanding, combat ignorance, prejudice, racism and xenophobia in order to soothe and/or avoid conflicts in and outside our homeregions. Cooperation with local institutions and authorities has already been started, but the project offers new possiblities especially in teaching and learning particularly in ICT and language skills. First pupils get into contact in the internet on the platform TwinSpace. In tandem work they introduce their schools/homeregions to each other. English will be the common language but whenever possible foreign languages taught in all schools will be tried to put into practice. Both teachers and pupils will benefit from these exchanges in foreign languages thus increasing their ability of becoming entirely European. From the very beginning a project website will be created, continuously worked on and updated. A logo competition will be held to challenge the pupils´ creativity and sense for competing (fairplay). Furthermore an information board/corner on the Erasmus+ project will be put up in the schoolhall. Migration in the participating countries varies and needs to be examined and compared. So first, each school does research on the history of migration in its homeregion. Pupils learn that migration is not a new phenomenon but has always existed and influenced our cultures over centuries. The status quo of migration in each school´s homeregion is examined, like types of migrants, reasons for migration, situation of migrants. Then the school community will be closer looked at. To find out whether schoolmates have a migration background, a survey will be done in each school. Pupils will interview fellow pupils to find out about their families´ background (action taking/ inquiry based learning). The partner schools compare their results and pupils learn that migration varies according to the geographical position within Europe. Certain aspects of the influence of migration will be examined in the schools´ districts, like architecture, food, music/the arts and fashion. Field trips are organized to actually see the influences in reality. Pupils will do documentary work, prepare collages and exhibitions. The results of all the partner schools will be compared (fishpool) at a learning/teaching/training activity. Pupils learn that not just in their homeregion migration has taken place and left is cultural traces but all across Europe. Then the current legislation on migration within Europe and in the partner schools´ homeregions is examined. The protection of the borderlines will be looked at and reflections made on current measures taken and different forms of initiatives compared. The situations of legal/illegal immigrants will be examined and contacts to migrants and local authorities and institutions will be established (challenging pupils´ own initiative). At the last learning/teaching/training activity a simulation game will be acted out. A conference in the European Parliament will be put on stage with pupils of the different partner schools standing up for their country´s needs and ideas. Fair solutions will be looked upon and compromises tried to be found. Recipes typical for the partner schools ´ countries but having actually migrant roots will be collected in all the partner schools and put together in a booklet called "Tastes of Europe". Throughout the project the use of foreign languages will be enforced and CLiL practiced. To learn more about the partner schools´ native languages typical communication phrases will be collected and written down in a language glossary. Therein typical idioms and their cultural background will be explained and words influenced by migrants will be included, too. Right from the start contacts to NGOs, local authorities and institutions will be established and towards the end of the project each partner school sees how they can support the work of these institutions with special events or establish help groups, activities and activities at school to support migrant children and help to get them integrated. A group of pupils functioning as a film team will accompany the project from the very beginning and create a final DVD on the project. At the last learning/teaching/training activity a final event called "We are Europe" will be organized by teachers and pupils (event organizing) with the patronages and representatives of the NGOs/institutions involved.
The project called "Colours of Europe - Migration and its cultural effects on Europe" was based on close cooperation between schools in Germany, Italy, Turkey, Ireland, Hungary, France and Portugal. All countries and schools face the challenge of migration as a daily circumstance and all schools have migrant pupils or pupils out of migrant families. Our project aimed at establishing intercultural dialogue and promote openness, mutual respect and understanding, combat ignorance, prejudice, racism and xenophobia in order to soothe and/or avoid conflicts in and outside our homeregions. Cooperation with local institutions and authorities had already started before the beginning of the project. First pupils got into contact via emailing and presenting video clips they have filmed to present themselves/school/community. English was the common language. From the very beginning a project website was created, continuously worked on and updated. A logo competition was held to challenge the pupils´ creativity and sense for competing (fairplay). An information board/corner on the Erasmus+ project was put up in the schoolhall. Each partner school created its national flag with school items and filmed this creation. Then each school did research on the history of migration in its homeregion. Timelines on migration of the partner schools were put together on a huge poster which was printed and hung up in each school (also put on website; link: results). Pupils learned that migration is not a new phenomenon but has always existed and influenced our cultures over centuries. The status quo of migration in each school´s homeregion was examined, like types of migrants, reasons for migration, situation of migrants. To transfer the results to the school community, the community was closer looked at. To find out whether schoolmates and teachers have a migration background, an online survey was done in each school. The partner schools compared their results of their surveies and pupils learned that migration varies according to the geographical position within Europe. Certain aspects of the influence of migration were examined in the schools´ districts: architecture, food, music/the arts, fashion. Field trips were organized to actually see the influences in real. Pupils learned that not just in their homeregion migration has taken place and left is cultural traces but all across Europe. Then the current legislation on migration within Europe and in the partner schools´ homeregions was examined. The protection of the borderlines was looked at and reflections made on current measures taken and different forms of initiatives compared. The situations of legal/illegal immigrants were examined, contacts to migrants and local authorities and institutions were established (challenging pupils´ own initiative). The Gymnasium Bad Aibling worked together with responsible authorities, NGOs and the 300 immigrants who were given shelter in the school´s gym at that time. Together with migrants the school organized a rock concert with musicians from migrant countries in the school hall, an art exhibition with a migrant artist and a debate with a representative of migrants/NGOs/authorities. At the last learning/teaching/training activity aspects of migration within Europe were discussed in international groupwork. Recipes typical for the partner schools ´ countries but having actually migrant roots were collected in all the partner schools and put together in a booklet called "Tastes of Europe". Pupils filmed the making of one traditional dish and put it on the common website. To learn more about the partner schools´ native languages, typical communication phrases were collected and written down in a language glossary. The language glossary was put on the common website and native speakers saying the phrases were filmed so that the pronunciation of the phrases can be studied by pupils of the partner schools and other interested members of the school community and public. At the last meeting of the partner schools an integrative music workshop took place. A final reception with representatives of neighbouring schools and politicians was given. A big celebration honouring our various roots with activities planned and carried out by international group work finalised the project work. The partner schools decided to cooperate further and started an etwinning project called "Europe Radio" for 2017-2018.