"Heritage: a Journey from our Present to our Past " is a two-year project that involves five countries: Italy Poland Spain Greece and Croatia. In the first step each school studies its own territory and chooses a monument to adopt, it could be a church, a museum, a fountain, a statue, a street, a square, a bridge, an old mill, something that has a historical and relevant emotional meaning for the whole community. Then the school becomes responsible for the symbolic custody of the monument for a period of two years, enjoying it and acting as guide during different public events or during visits by other schools or organised groups. Under the guide of teachers, students become the protagonists of the activities that will be carried out in order to learn about the adopted monument in depth, and, later, explain this information to the citizens. After a training course in CLIL addressed to the teachers and held in Italy by collegues who attented KA1 courses about this and other new methodologies, students make a historical, cultural and environmental study of the monument in English (CLIL application). They will produce padlets for this activity. Then they will design a program for the care and appreciation of the chosen place. Communication is essential for the success. So we will constantly exchange ideas and plans through Facebook, Skype, E-twinning Twinspace, Whatsup but also with some meetings. We will promote a contest with the production of a video to attract and sponsor the choice of the monument. Students will vote for the best video .But the promotion of the monument will be carried out also through events, such as a music performance, an exhibition, and a guided tour led by the students themselves, a series of initiatives that will promote, publicise and make citizens appreciate the monument. The first meeting in Spain will give particular value to Heritage because Alcala de Henares, the Spanish town where the school is located , is a Unesco World Heritage Site. Spanish students will accompany their peers to visit sights of historic interest becoming little "Ciceroni". Around the monument there will be a music performance by the 5 countries that will attract audience. After this step in every school there will be art and photograpy laboratories. The technique of the open-air painting, particularly ineteresting, will be used. The second meeting in Greece is the event Exhibition "Images from Europe", art laboratories will be held in the Greek school with the methodology of peer to peer education. Then the schools will be involved in the production of a web site with the most modern technology as well a web-app that will encourage turists to visit "unknown" places not so far from "famous" places declared by Unesco WORLD HERITAGE SITES. The third students meeting will be in Croatia. A Turist Fair where students will show leaflets, padlets, videos and finally the web- app that will be a useful outcome of the whole project. The last teachers' meetig will be a rountable in Poland. A summit where project members, local authorities, experts of art and architecture, Ministry of education and turism will outline the basic ideas, the framework and the results of the project, will reflect upon the undertaken steps, and will launch future proposals. Students in groups of 4, aged from 10 to 13, will have five days mobilities. In three countries the five partners will meet all together. The number of the students depends on the fact that It could be sometimes difficult for a school to find more than 14/16 host families. All the community will be involved in the project (teachers, staff, families, local authorities, associations, its number is very high about 5000 people, because heritage belongs to everyone. There will be around 400 people involved directly. The main goal of the project is to make the new generations aware of the protection and safeguarding of historical heritage sights Main objectives: -To promote the feeling of belonging to the city and encourage a responsible citizenry -To inform the citizens of their heritage sites -To promote respect and care for historical heritage sites -To foster the educational role of the city, as a space generating individual and collective identity -To develop European dimension -To reinforce ICT skills - To develop languages competences through CLIL methodology - To be more confident in speaking in public Future proposals: -To involve more sectors of the city in the initiative, pooling synergies in order to give the project more visibility. -To carry out other events addressed to the citizens in general so that this project is not seen as a mere school activity -To publicize the initiative through more media, such as, through television channels -To start new projects with other countries to enrich the list of the site with the ambitious aim to look for a palce that is worth to be declared WORLD HERITAGE SITE by UNESCO.
The project "Heritage: a Journey from our Present to our Past", suddenly interrupted by the uninvited but now sadly famous guest, has allowed 5 schools from 5 European countries (with a large number of their students, teachers, families, communities and stakeholders) to live and share unique and constructive experiences both from an educational and relational and social point of view. We can and must divide these two years of activities into two macro periods, pre and post covid. In the pre-covid period, the three planned mobilities were achieved without any obstacle or difficulty with a success that goes beyond what we had planned. The post-covid period, from March to August, unfortunately coincided with a period in which the school experienced a great moment of confusion, looking for the various ways to continue the didactics. The mobilities have been blocked due to force maejeure. Unfortunately, there was not the time to organize the activities in a virtual way. The mobility in Croatia fell just at the beginning of the lock-down where nothing was clear and we still hoped that it was just a moment. The second cancelled mobility in Poland fell in a not adequate time, when each school was reorganizing the main activities, exams and so on. However, there was an interesting contact via Zoom, a digital platform that has become a very useful companion of these months, between teachers and students to exchange impressions, emotions and fears in the Covid era. Despite the uninvited guest, we can proudly state, thanks to a constant, rich and detailed monitoring, that the project respected all the steps, completed them successfully and achieved the objectives brilliantly. The first phase, the research and adoption of the monument, saw the protagonists of the project engaged in the study of their territory, doing research, questioning citizens and institutions. The pupils had the task and responsibility, with the right guide, to choose the monument to take care of and bring it to the international renown. Everybody studied hard. This step made possible to achieve one of the main goal: to promote the feeling of belonging to the city and encourage a responsible citizenry. We started to communicate since the beginning with regular Skype meetings among teachers but also with two by two students meetings. Communication was possible through the different media from Facebook, E-Twinning with the page of the project, Whatsapp and Instagram. Promoting contests, such as the logo contest or the video contest, a cultural contest, was really motivating.The European dimension was very well spread into school contest and outside it. Every year we celebrated also the European day of Languages and the Erasmus days with different digital and cultural activities. While the children were documenting themselves to become Ciceroni of the monument, and by producing a video, the teachers prepared themselves on the CLIL Methodology during a learning meeting in Italy so that they could subsequently ensure that their students were able to promote the monument internationally. An added value of this mobility was the participation of 18 Polish students hosted by the Italian ones. The Polish students supported the travel expenses with their own economic resources Achieved objectives: To develop languages competences through CLIL methodology, ability to speak in public, reinforce ICT skills ability During the following mobilities in Spain and in Greece students were ready to accompany their peers to visit sights of historic interest in their country, concentrating their attention around the monument making it the protagonist in a music performance in Spain and in a art exhibition in Greece. Big town events that involved the whole community not only the school members. Achieved objectives: - To inform the citizens of their heritage sites -To foster the educational role of the city, as a space generating individual and collective identity -To develop European dimension -To be more confident in speaking in public - to develop artistic skills ( playing an instrument, singing, drawing taking photos) Dissemination was constant too for the five countries. Big public events, recurring contacts with media, production of articles, up-loading of web pages, releases of interviews. Developing and disseminating this project in Europe we reached a large number of people and we became a good example for many who could take inspiration from it. Replication is really possible. We also hope, at the end of Covid-19 issue. to take again our last and main goal that is going on with this project involving much more countries.