The European Union is the first world cultural power, and the value of the cultural heritage of its member states is invaluable. The European Parliament and the Council of Europe emphasize this fact celebrating throughout 2018 the Year of Cultural Heritage, whose main aim is "to enhance the cultural exchange and the appreciation of European cultural heritage as a shared resource, as well as to make aware of the common history and values and to reinforce the sense of belonging to a common European family". This strategic partnership comprise four Music Conservatories and three High Schools from Germany, Spain, Italy and Portugal that aim to develop a project focused on the educational and social value of the European heritage. The seven educational institutions are leading cultural agents and are very concerned about their role as social actors, and seek out excellence by improving their educational programmes and methodological innovations. Our project joins many plurinational cultural manifestations, organised in an ambitious activity plan that implements the project-based learning among other methodological strategies, and stresses the importance of our cultural heritage, essential for the development of our European identity. The proposed agenda consists, among other activities, of four international staff meetings including pedagogical conferences, concerts and cultural events, as well as four international students meetings with academic activities promoting the transmission of the cultural heritage. The meetings pursue following goals: 1. To promote the awareness of the European cultural heritage among all members of the educational community. 2. To promote the awareness of the similarities and differences of the cultural legacy of the different European regions and develop the sense of an European citizenship. 3. To encourage the improvement of curricula, teaching methods and school management strategies, and disseminate the results throughout the respective nations. 4. To analyze the social role of the concerned institutions and encourage their transformation in agents of social change. 5. To foster multilingualism, digital competence and metacognitive learning among students, in order to improve their qualifications and facilitate their personal and professional integration in the European context. The implementation of our project will directly involve around 80 teachers and 70 students in learning mobilities, but it is intended to have a much bigger impact on the institutions: taking into account the whole staffs and all the students of the different institutions, we will indirectly reach more than 5000 citizens. Besides that, as a result of the foreseen cultural events, a much greater impact on the local community is to be expected. This is thus a large-scale project, offering among its achievements both tangible - audiovisual material related to the European heritage, temporary exhibitions, teaching exchange documents, proposals of curricula improvement,...- and intangible results - development of students' key competences on European cultural awareness and expression, methodological innovation, development of specific abilities among schools' leadership teams, changes in the institutional concept of the educational centres,...-. All these achievements, moreover, will be sustainable beyond the Erasmus+ period, on the one hand thanks to the commitment of the involved institutions to establish common action lines - e.g. joint research strategies to deepen the achieved results-, and on the other hand, due to the profound transformations expected to occur in the citizens directly or indirectly involved in the project.
The European Union is the first world cultural power, and the value of the cultural heritage of its member states is invaluable. The European Parliament and the Council of Europe emphasized this fact celebrating throughout 2018 the Year of Cultural Heritage, whose main aim was "to encourage the sharing and appreciation of Europe's cultural heritage as a shared resource, to raise awareness of common history and values, and to reinforce a sense of belonging to a common European space”. This aim is shared in its entirety by the educational institutions that have formed the strategic partnership MusIntegrACTION -four Music Conservatories and three High Schools from Germany, Italy, Portugal and Spain- and, within this framework, we have developed between 2018 and 2021 a project focused on the educational and social value of the European cultural heritage. The seven educational institutions, as leading cultural agents, were very concerned about their role as social actors, and sought out excellence by improving their educational programmes and methodological innovations. Our project joined many plurinational cultural manifestations, organised in an ambitious activity plan that implemented the project-based learning among other methodological strategies, and stressed the importance of our cultural heritage, essential for the development of our European identity. The work plan consisted, among other activities, of four international staff meetings during which pedagogical conferences where held, as well as four international student meetings with academic activities focusing on the transmission of the cultural heritage and the active citizenship. The development of the Erasmus+ MusIntegrACTION project has made it possible to achieve the following goals: 1. To promote the awareness of the European cultural heritage among all members of the educational community. 2. To promote the awareness of the similarities and differences of the cultural legacy of the different European regions and develop the sense of European citizenship. 3. To encourage, through transnational cooperation, the improvement of curricula, teaching methods and school management strategies, and disseminate the results throughout the respective nations. 4. To analyze the social role of the concerned institutions and encourage their transformation in agents of social change. 5. To foster multilingualism, digital competence and metacognitive learning among students, in order to improve their qualifications and facilitate their personal and professional integration in the European context. Our project has directly involved 64 teachers and 74 students in 8 mobility activities, and it has had a much bigger impact on the institutions contexts: if we only take into account the whole teaching staffs and all the students of the partner institutions, more than 5000 citizens have been indirectly reached. Moreover, as a result of the cultural events that have been held, such as concerts, it has been possible to make a further impact on the local community. This has been thus a large-scale project, offering among its achievements both tangible - audiovisual material related to the European heritage, temporary exhibitions, teaching exchange documents, project website and social media accounts,...- and intangible results - development of students' key competences on European cultural awareness and expression, methodological innovation, changes in the institutional concept of the partner educational centres and in the schools' leadership teams,...-. Finally, we underline the sustainability of these achievements, which will be maintained over time beyond the funding period due to three main factors: 1) the commitment of the involved institutions, that have already established common lines of work for the future (e.g. the development of a new Erasmus+ project combining music and dance events); 2) the profound transformations that the programmed activities have brought directly or indirectly among the citizens involved in the project ; and 3) the curricular changes proposed to the Education Authorities in some of the participating countries that will benefit future generations of students.