Attending to the priorities of "Europe 2020" and "ET2020" we believe that schools should pursue the highest quality of education, promoting the internationalization and openness to other European countries and the foreign languages, promoting the immersion of students in a changing society, seeking to be strategic leaders in the times we live. Our project "Art Links Borders – El Arte une Fronteras" aims to develop the 1st and 3rd "Europe 2020" priorities: the growth based on innovational education and the inclusive growth, cohesionating people and cultures, considering achieving the following objectives:1. Promoting socio-cultural inclusion, the union of cultures within Europe and the promotion of the English Language.2. Implementing innovative and new methodologies in our teaching practice, to increase the motivation and involvement of our students.3. Achieving greater impact and educational influence on the whole community, promoting training and other actions by encouraging the creation of a network of people and institutions.4. Implementing the results of this project in the development of future plans and programs.The project partners are from five countries of the European Union (Spain, Italy, Bulgaria, Romania and Lithuania) and we count on teachers who have a high level of academic and professional qualifications, experience in projects LLP or Erasmus +. As the target groups of the project, we have taken into consideration students of primary and secondary education, as well as all the educational and civic community, having developed strategies of impact and dissemination as seminars, exchange of best practices and training and teaching activities.Society and students, target groups of the project, are around 20,000 people, and they need to increase the knowledge of different cultures and they can do it through art and audiovisual and innovative creations. It is the population at risk of social exclusion, in social, cultural or economic inequality, the main beneficiary from the progress made and promoted by the project, but also other students and people involved in.The main activities to be developed are:- Workshops for teachers: "CLIL, Innovation and Education"; "Creative Education and Dance"; "School Quality and Inclusion"; "Intercultural Use of ICT in Art and Education"; and "Games, Innovation and CLIL Evaluation".- Mobility of small groups of `ambassadors´ students where social inclusion and innovative activities will be developed.- Creation of an educational guide serving the educational community titled as "Educational Innovation, Arts, Social Inclusion and CLIL".- Creation of open courses and seminars for families and teachers, both at classroom and online.- Creation of profiles on social networks, website and use of Youtube to promote an interconnect and innovative training built by the students.- Workshops and innovative audiovisual creations: Workshop of "Stop Motion" animation, video, soundmaps, Art in the Environment, Cave Paintings Workshop, creation of geolocated maps, Geocaching, Art in Technology, etc.- Publication of academic papers on the motivation to learn English and attitude towards the social and cultural inclusion.Within the project, we are going to use an analytical and critical methodology, with special attention to the processes of quality control and improvement and correction, based on a fluid, open and current communication, in order to ensure the best development and the maximum efficiency.The expected impact on all the participants and target groups will be:- To increase awareness of students and the educational community about the necessity to promote social inclusion, improving their attitude towards people of other cultures or countries, and promoting a greater integration of all sectors of the community, inside and outside school.- To promote the importance of English as a Second Language, encouraging dynamic and motivating pedagogical methodologies.- To develop innovative strategies to positively influence on the attitude and motivation of students, reducing the high school dropout rates.- To empower students and develop their competence of "learning to learn".In conclusion, we seek, in the long-term, to improve society which we are part of and to make our teachers more innovative professionals and motivators, growing at an institutional level and promoting quality education and educational excellence.
The project Art Links Borders was carried out between the 1st of September 2016 and the 31st of August 2018, starting from a detailed planning and studied design, taking as a starting point some of the priorities of “Europe 2020”, of the participating institutions and of the rest of organizations of our scope with which we have collaborated. The internationalization of the participating institutions has also been one of the main objectives pursued, establishing efficient and productive contacts, sheltered by the creation of new institutional networks, from whom we expect to keep benefiting equally over the next few years. Likewise, we also think that they are going to help us to obtain high learning rates in relation to didactics of teaching foreign languages and CLIL methodologies, in order to help students in their language immersion in an ever-changing society, trying to be a strategic reference nowadays. Based on the analysis we made, we consider that the project “Art Links Borders – El Arte Une Fronteras” has managed to develop the 1st and 3rd priorities established by “Europe 2020”, as we planned during the first drafting of the project: the promotion of educational innovation and a greater inclusive growth which facilitates the creation of social inclusion scenes. In the same way, we consider that the project has achieved the planned objectives: 1- To promote social inclusion, the union of the peoples and cultures under the European framework, as well as the English language, through the exchange of experiences and the study of cultures and social realities of each partner’s institution. 2- To implement innovative and new methodologies during our teaching work, which we think to have increased the motivation and involvement of the students through a teaching proposal of new pedagogic scenes based on the mentioned innovation. 3- To achieve a greater grade of educational impact and influence in all the community through the promotion, among others, of teaching actions, the creation of a network of people and institutions, and attaining the pillars of an institutional cooperation environment, at the local, national and international level we wished. 4- To implement the results of this project in the development of future plans and programs. In fact, this Erasmus+ project has set the base of the new KA201 project for 2018-2020 that the coordinating institution has created and which has already been approved and funded. In the 2016-2018 project of this Final Report, the partners were from 5 different European countries: Spain (coordinator), Italy, Bulgaria, Rumania and Lithuania. All the participants had a great and an enriching professional profile and experience in LLP or Erasmus+ projects. In relation to the target groups of this project, we were able to reach our immediate reference population, comprised of Primary and Secondary Education students, families, teachers and the near and medium distance environment, involving other families, other teachers, other institutions (such as Education Departments, Teacher Training Centers, Universities, etc.), by the development of impact a dissemination strategies which tried to multiply the achievements and activities designed within the framework of the project. Thereby, we think that we have attained to increase the consciousness of the students and the educational community about the need of promoting social inclusion, as well as the need of developing innovative strategies that allow us to influence positively in the attitude and motivation of the students. Also, the autonomy of our students has increased and they have move forward in the development of the “learning to learn” ability. The main activities we carried out during the project were: - Training and innovation teaching workshops for teachers from our institutions, which have also been replicated for other teachers from local institutions close to the members. - Innovative activities for the students, not just for the students participating in the mobilities, but also for their mates, through the figure of the Ambassador Student. - Creation of an open virtual campus, available through the website of the project: www.artlinksborders.eu - Creation of social network profiles and a website to promote an interconnected and innovative education with resources created by the students. - Creative intervention in each town of the members through murals, tourist information signs integrated in educational activities and available to all the people, etc.