With our project we aim to raise the awareness of the diversity of Europe among the students first and foremost and consequently among the schools, families and communities. We are two schools, one located in Bremen / Germany in a peripheral district in Bremen in that many families don’t have the possibility of travelling and making intercultural experience abroad. The other school in Mallorca is located in a rural area where little transformation has been possible along the centuries and where the families stick to a protective education. Sometimes prejudices arise unwillingly and we hope to be capable to transform this experiences. Three goals are leading our activites: First, the participating pupils are learning the language of the other country and we hope they improve their language skills applicating the foreign language in an authentic context. Secondly they experience the value of living together and sharing cultural richness. And last but not least we want the students to make intercultural experiences reflect them and mine their prejudices. Based on these experiences the students produce a movie about intercultural encounters. These goals will be reached step by step. The first steps refer to the mutual introducing and the cultural exchange. The students present their hometown and habits at home. They exchange tongue twisters, talk about prejudices they have and are confronted with and compare their cultures focusing on the similarities and discovering some differences. Their impressions are collected and discussed in the Twin Space. The next step refers to the exciting first encounter. The students visit each other, live with the families and discover the common traces of the European heritage but also get attentive to different habits and find out the formation of these differences. After the real encounter follows the step of intercultural reflection. Participants look back at the prejudices they had had before the encounters and reflect these prejudices. The students’ experience will be collected and discussed in the classroom but also with the exchange partners via the Twinspace. The IES Sineu has applied for a course KA1(2018-1-ES01-KA01-047899) which has already been accepted in the provisional list of admitted, about languages and digital platforms. The aim is to empower the teachers to work with these platforms in transnational ERASMUS-projects. The course will take place in August 2018. So the attending teacher will share her experiences with us. The second year of the project will focus on the planning and production of a movie in that a story of an intercultural encounter will be told. The story is based on the intercultural experience the students have made during their first project year. The students learn to write a screenplay, how to film a movie and attend a workshop of acting. After getting these skills they start producing the movie and tell a fictitious story based on their experiences. By spreading the movie and their awareness the whole school has a profit of this experience. Besides the movie can be used for lessons with the goal of teaching intercultural learning.
The project „Die Magie des Films – Derribando Fronteras“ aims to tear down boundaries and by filming the experiences we build up a feeling for European identity. We are two schools, one located in Bremen / Germany in a peripheral district in Bremen in that many families don’t have the possibility of travelling and making intercultural experience abroad. The other school in Mallorca is located in a rural area where little transformation has been possible along the centuries and where the families stick to a protective education. Sometimes prejudices arise unwillingly and we hope to be capable to transform these experiences. Consequently the circumstances the students live in differ a lot. They experienced them intensively by staying in host families. To set a focus on their intercultural experiences the students had to film these special experiences. In the end a documentary with three parts was produced. The documentary leaded us to two goals: First the students had to focus on the intercultural experiences because they filmed them and later they had to reflect these experiences by recording audios for the documentary. Second: a conclusive product was made, that has a benefit for the whole school. It can be used for teaching intercultural experiences or to prepare students for school exchanges. Incidentally the students learn how to communicate in English, German, Spanish or by using signs and they widen their digital competences. Three mobilities were realized (the last one had to be cancelled due to Covid -19.). During the mobilities the students attended different film workshops. They learned how to film from different perspectives, how to cut a movie and they got to know the method Pixiliation. Furthermore they learned how to interview themselves and how to film it. In terms of content the mobilities focused on the influence of different cultures on our today’s way of life connected to immigration and emigration. During the first mobility the students got to know how Jewish, Muslim and Christian cultures influenced the Spanish culture. The second mobility was dedicated to emigration and immigration by having a good look at the fairytale “The Bremen Town Musicians”. During the third mobility the student’s experiences special traditions in Mallorca. To prepare and reflect the mobilites we realized different activites in the TwinSpace. They presented their hometown and habits at home. They exchanged tongue twisters and their favorite typical family recipes, presented their favorite musicians, compared their cultures focusing on the similarities and discovering some differences. These common experiences hopefully left a base for feeling an European unity. The experiences were captured in a documentary with three parts. It is available for the school communities for further teaching of intercultural competences. It was the first Erasmus+ project for the German School. And surely a lot of projects will follow. We discovered the possibilities, that are offered by the European Union and we realized points we have to improve for further projects. Both schools plan to achieve a feeling in their school community for European identity by realizing more projects Erasmus+.