Looking at the news every day we realize that peace in the world is a rare value and that after a period of peace since 1945 Europe now has to face the consequences of international conflicts and wars directly with the refugees streaming into our continent. This flow of refugees provokes one of the most serious conflicts between European countries since the beginning of European cooperation. This fact leads us to times when European countries were fighting against each other in two world wars. For the centenary of WWI, one of the major events in European history, we've chosen this conflict, the „Urkatastrophe“ of the 20th century, to show why this conflict directed Europe to a deep crisis ending in World War II. As European citizens students nowadays have to learn from this aspect of history to value European cooperation as an integral part of peace and prosperity. They also have to realize that they have to assume responsibility for other parts of the world in order to spread out peace and prosperity to others. With three schools from countries of former enemies in World War I from Germany, France and UK we want to get a multinational perspective on the historical as well as on the actual topic especially from young persons' point of view. As we already realized a successful project between Werdenfels-Gymnasium in Garmisch-Partenkirchen and Lycée Ozanam Lille about „young citizens in WWI“ it was obvious to choose these schools as partners. With Bayhouse School from Gosport an ideal partner was found already showing expertise in this subject at the „Eurovision 1914“ in Oberhausen, a historical conference where all partners took part. The main objective of this new project is to develop a theatre piece about the First World War and about the consequences we have to draw from this today. Students are involved from the beginning by creating a new theatre piece that doesn't exist yet to a performance including all aspects of theatre work like acting, stage design, choreography etc. To get a high quality of youth work the pupils are supported by professional artists from the Residenztheater in Munich, the Théâtre du Nord Lille and the Hampshire Cultural Trust. Benefitting from this cooperation they understand the need for high level competencies in modern society and work and for cross-sectoral learning. With the raising awareness about the historical facts about WWI they develop the peace-keeping dimension of cooperation in the EU and the importance of everybody's engagement for an active European citizenship especially if we consider a lack of solidarity between European nations nowadays.12 students from each school will be member of the artistical project but there are also others involved, for example to establish the website or document the progress of work in a film. School community will see the final product, the performance of the theatre piece, during a pan-European tour.To get this project running students will do historical research at the beginning, visiting the battlefields in Flandres and Picardie as well as historical sites, museums and archives. They will interview volunteers about their connection to WWI and get a personnel impression they can use to develop theatre scenes. They keep the question in mind, why this war did not end all wars as it was thought by contemporaries and why even today numbers of war increase all over the world. With all these considerations they will create their own multilingual theatre piece in multinational groups and in a second part produce the performance being responsible for all the performance works supported by professional artists leading multinational theatre workshops. The final product will be shown to school communities as well as to publicity in Munich, Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Lille, Gosport and Winchester. The progress of the work will be documented at the website and a film about the „making of“ and the final performance. After the project an academic paper will be launched abouth the pedagogical implications and methods of the project. The benefits for all partners will be to get in contact to students from other countries in an artistic and creative way. Pupils will increase their self-confidence, learn more abouth professional work and get more open-minded to active European citizenship. The schools get a link to other European partners and can enlarge their international profile. Also the cooperation to three outstanding professional partners will allow future cooperations with them. For them the contact to students and to their future audience is a point of interest.
At the time of submitting the application for funding from Erasmus+ for this project, we wrote the following as our opening sentences: “Looking at the news every day, we realize that peace in the world is a rare value and that after a period of peace since 1945 Europe now has to face the consequences of international conflicts and wars directly with the refugees streaming into our continent. This flow of refugees provokes one of the most serious conflicts between European countries since the beginning of European cooperation.” It is powerful and sobering that nearly three years later how prophetic those words have proved to be. If anything, the situation is now more pressing and potentially tense, and therefore the worth of our endeavour funded by Erasmus+ has proved to be all the more important. This project has proven significant at the time of the centenary of the WWI in that we have brought three schools from countries of former enemies in that ‘Great War’. Students from Germany, France and UK gained a multinational perspective on the historical as well as contemporary matters. The aim of the project we expressed as “to learn from history to value European cooperation as integral part of peace and prosperity.” We evaluate much has been achieved towards this aspiration, which against the unanticipated backdrop of Brexit has proved to be all the more pertinent. We have have built successfully on a previous project between Werdenfels-Gymnasium Garmisch-Partenkirchen and Lycée Ozanam Lille about „young citizens in WWI“, and one by Bay House School in Gosport about Gallipoli. These were showcased at the „Eurovision 1914“ in Oberhausen. This new project has succeeded in its objective to develop a theatre piece about the First World War and about the consequences the young people can draw from this today. Students were involved from the beginning, creating the new theatre piece, supported by professional artists from the Residenztheater in Munich, the Compagnie Éolisonge in Lille and a Drama teacher from Gosport. The students worked in multi-national groups carrying out research at the battlefields and museums of Northern France (including La Somme, les Flanders, Ypres and Peronne). They also visited the beaches used for the D-Day Landings near Portsmouth, the Imperial War Museum in London and the Marshall Centre in GAP. A particularly poignant activity was when the students in a group of one German, one French and one English young person together cleaned the grave of a fallen soldier at one of the war cemeteries. In going this, they kept the question in mind, why the ‘great’ war was not the war to end all wars, and devised their theatre scenes using the evidence and data from their research. The students reflected much on what they learned and, with the help of the professional artistes, discovered ways to express their findings, thoughts and emotions through the medium of drama, dance and song. As a result they created their own multilingual theatre piece. The process involved them spending a week living in each other’s houses as the project was structured over the two years with time spent in each town. On the second occasions of time spent in each country, the work was to finalise the production and to perform it. The Premiere was at the National Theatre of Bavaria in Munich. The theatre piece then toured to GAP, Lille, Amiens and Gosport. There were nine performances in total to an audience internationally of nearly 2000 persons. The project’s website has had over 6000 followers and the project was reported by the local media in each of the places of the performances, with articles in local newspapers and interviews on local radio. A process of evaluation has been maintained throughout the duration of the project using the OFAJ/DFJW online survey tool, professional academic researchers from the University of Saarbrücken and the Residenztheater surveying students’ opinions. We also monitored the activity of the project with regular meeting of the teacher-leaders. We always knew how rich an experience this would be for our students in our schools. We saw them mature and we could not have asked for more in how much their confidence grew and their thinking deepened about complex multi-international matters. However, we have been amazed by the impact of the project more widely. The benefit to each school has been greater than just the students involved in the project, as was the experience for their families hosting European students on more than one occasion: this produced an engagement by the parents that was extraordinary and unexperienced by us on previous exchange projects. Finally the contribution made to raising awareness in our communities was more significant than we had imagined. The feedback from audiences who saw the performances has been astonishing. It has proved that learning through the medium of theatre can have a long term benefit for promoting the message of European collaboration.