Our multifaceted project HERCULES- HERitage and CULture : Exploring, Sharing and preserving the hidden treasures of Europe - invites approx. 3000 students and 300 teachers and local communities from 6 European countries (Slovakia, Poland, Lithuania, Cyprus, Portugal, Bulgaria) to create a dialogue about social and educational value of European cultural heritage. We hope that through an augmented understanding of the cultural heritage our students will better value it, by valuing it they will want to care for it, by caring, discovering and studying it, they will enjoy it and from this enjoyment comes a desire to understand it even better. This generates a desire to understand the values of fellow European citizens and facilitates the identification of the diversities as well as similarities between our countries' cultures and promote ownership of shared values, equality, non-discrimination and social inclusion through education, training and youth activities and innovative and integrated approaches in higher education practice. According to the Europe 2020 strategy for smart, sustainable and inclusive growth, one of the targets is to improve the quality and efficiency of education and training. It highlights the importance of smart growth in education, through encouraging young people to learn, study and update their skills and to create sustainable conditions of secondary education. These values we would like to apply into this project activities and potentially into the long-term goals of our institutions. The project will let participants -investigate and compare different cultural issues such as language, culture, natural sites, traditions, art, architecture and local tourism products supported by collaborative learning, innovative educational methodology CLIL and IT technologies; - improve their skills and abilities to organize local and international events and meetings, educational excursions, share the best experiences related to the educational excursions - make contacts with local educational and cultural institutions, communities and authorities around Europe and share their best practises, The added value gained through international cooperation will be a more developed self: self- confidence, empathy, tolerance, team player, time management, understanding, communication, digital and organizational skills and competences. All of these will also help to strengthen the teaching profiles of teacher staff, their language and project-based competences and boost the repertoire of their teaching methods thus they become more respected by the students and regional community as not only teachers but also facilitators of innovative learning, multilingual events and international project cooperation. Our students will learn about European Heritage sites, about the history and traditions of their own and other cultures, about ecology and the importance of protecting natural biodiversity. They will gain awareness of the threats facing the sites and learn how the international community as a whole unites to save our common heritage. Most importantly, they discover how they can contribute to heritage conservation and make themselves heard. The HERCULES project seeks to encourage and enable tomorrow’s decision-makers to participate in heritage conservation and to respond to the continuing threats facing our European Heritage. Moreover, they can share their work with their peers in partner schools. Staying in host families will also strengthen the perception of the cultural uniqueness of the European population as well as national similarities and diversities.
The project "HERCULES- HERitage and CULture: Exploring, Sharing and preserving the hidden treasures of Europe" - invited our students, teachers as well as residents and institutions of 6 European countries into international dialogue about the values that we, as communities, recognize in the context of cultural heritage. The project was inspired by the declaration of 2018 as the European Year of Cultural Heritage and support from the managements of our schools to hold international strategic partnerships that would provide new educational opportunities in three basic areas: strengthening language learning and acquiring new competences, supporting the European dimension and strengthening the teaching profile of teachers. We were working on 6 main topics: Natural heritage, Cultural heritage hidden in the language, Crafts, folklore and architecture, Traditional symbols, motifs in Art Legends, fairy tales and myths and Proheritage - preservation and sustainability of CH. Project teams conducted activities that enabled our students to discover, understand, value cultural heritage and become tolerant of the culture and cultural expressions of other nations. Holding 6 international short-term student exchanges and many local and regional activities our students learned about a wide range of cultural heritage, participated in various research and studies with regional institutions responsible for preserving and sustaining the cultural heritage of their regions. Conducting and completing the tasks of the project they created various presentation materials, which they transformed into 6 main outputs of the project: 1. The HERCULES project website, which includes a detailed picture of the course and documents the activities of the project and contains all the outputs of students within 6 project topics 2. Recipe book of traditional dishes 3. CLIL lesson plans with focus on Cultural Heritage 4. Hercules game - online activities 5. A documentary film "Unique Crafts of Europe" 6. Collection of legends and quizzes These can continue to be used in education by teachers and students of partner schools, other schools in the region who show interest, either during regular classes of English, History, Geography, Art/ Culture or as inspiration for further work in the field of cultural heritage preservation. We consider the main benefit of the project to be that our students value CH more thanks to the knowledge and understanding of the cultural heritage of their region and the regions of the partner countries. By respecting CH more, they want to take more care of it. By becoming more interested in it, discovering and studying it, carrying out their ideas, creativity in this area, they proposed ideas how they themselves can contribute to its preservation and sustainability and enjoyed the results of their work. The enthusiasm and pleasure came, the desire to understand even more the values that previous generations have upheld for us, our and future generations. They went from learning to creating and implementing their own ideas. From the beginning, we offered activities that developed understanding and tolerance, which helped to positively perceive the diversity and similarities between the cultures of our countries, supported the recognition of common values, but also tolerance of differences, equality, anti-discrimination. The richness and diversity of cultural heritage, both tangible and intangible, places associated with CH, various manifestations provided ample opportunities to use traditional but also innovative, collaborative and integrated educational approaches, thus supporting the expansion of traditional repertoire of educational activities and non-formal education in our schools. According to the "Europe 2020 strategy for smart, sustainable and inclusive growth", the aim is to improve the quality and efficiency of education and training. An integral part of the project was the use and development of competencies of students and teachers in the field of language learning, digital competences, support for creativity, independence and self-realization of individuals, development of the competence to work in a team and reflect on their own creation and group dynamics. Cultural heritage is all around us: in our cities, nature and archaeological sites. We find it not only in literature, art or objects, but also in craft skills, stories, gastronomy, music and film. It unites us in its diversity. Thanks to technology and the Internet, we have better access to it than ever before. Seeing and experiencing all these phenomena, even in other countries, is still a more intense experience. That is why we tend to visit other regions, we love traditional tastes and admire typical products of folk culture, crafts, architectural monuments. If we combine such experiences with learning, using foreign language skills, getting to know peers from other countries, it is again another more aspiring level.