Inspiration in art and literature can be enhanced thanks to muses, and it has been so since the Greek godesses. Nowadays, more than ever, pupils, teachers, people need inspiration to make their daily life fruitful and rich through learning. The assumption of this project is that MUSEums can contribute to this inspiration in their diversity. Learning is not something that stops when the school gates close. Pupils often consider museums to be places where old dusty paintings are on display - not making a lot of sense to them. That is why teachers need to accompany the pupils by creating activities that will motivate them and turn an expected boring moment into an enriching conscious visit; acquiring new habits that will help them understand their world and society, and thus becoming better citizens. In this MUSE project, teachers from France, Turkey, Ireland, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden and Germany will share their experiences and methods in museum education. They will create lessons and activities based on their local art, history, science, modern art, technical and environmental museums, and on the observations of the pupils from many european countries. All the tools created by the team will be updated on the project website, on etwinning, in brochures and in the “museums box” so that any teacher, pupil or family wanting to include museum education in their path to learning can easily find useful resources. Our aim is to make our tools and resources motivate many other people and inspire them towards a new life of learning in and outside the walls of a classroom.
MUSEums: Inspirational Learning is an Erasmus + project that wanted to show children that learning is a lifelong process that can be achieved everywhere; museums and out-of-school environments being especially rich resources. Its goal was also for teachers to consider out-of-school learning places in their lesson planning as a fantastic added value. MUSE proved to be much more than that, reaching those goals and outpassing them. Before the project, bringing students used to be considered as a recreational moment. Thanks to the project teachers from France, Spain, Sweden, Germany, Northern Ireland, the Netherlands and Turkey - with different perspectives and habits - have shared methods and have learnt from their meetings with the museum professionals. They have tested different types of activities and planning on their students so that the visits would have a bigger impact as a learning moment as well as open their minds to the world around them. They have experienced that learning not only takes place in a classroom but also in other environments. Most partners have seen their students evolve and become much more curious and self-confident towards their learning and their communication skills improve. The MUSEums project has impacted the schools of the different partners in a tremendous way. The project reached everyone at the different schools in one way or the other. Each of the 6 mobilities and/or action organised in the course of the project allowed all the teachers of the different schools to take part in the project and to exchange their views on out-of-school learning environments and create activities and analyses that can be used by their colleagues and anyone interested in that topic. But it went further than that. For instance, the way the students reacted when visiting the various museums ( local and internationally renowned). Some of these students never manage to see the inside of a museum due to a number of economical or social factors. Most schools focused on these kinds of students and got them involved in the project, in order to arouse their interest in museums and their importance in their social and cultural development as European citizens. And to avoid the risk of them never returning to a museum again. Another factor was the diversity of profiles of the different partners. Each teacher involved directly in the project learned from the experiences of the others, such as students in the Netherlands being more independent in their learning, museums in Sweden having developped a close link with the surrounding schools and being used to work together and the Irish team exchanging on dealing with students with behavioural problems. The students who were involved directly in the project took part in the organizing, execution, planning and hosting part of the programme, in order to make them feel a certain degree of commitment to the project but they were also the beneficiaries of the different visits and experiences held during the mobilities.at their school. The remaining students in the different schools were involved by making the project visible in school, by using the blog, the media and also a very simple pin-board in the Erasmus + corners or had out-of-school learning activities organised. This project has opened up the schools’ vision to out-of-school learning activities again. Almost every school takes a field trip on occasion. But this project made us look at these kinds of ‘trips’ from a very different perspective. Such as being critical in which museums are suitable and offer the possibilities where students can be involved and triggered in learning or have them not just walking around with no objective or purpose or also learn how to use your senses to experience a visit and remember what you've learnt in a much more efficient way. A museum visit is now always planned by all the partners as a whole sequence with pre-visit activities, missions during the visits and follow-up activities. It is no longer a recreational day out. It has become a proper part of the learning process for the students and an added value to the teaching process for the teachers.