The rising number of refugees and the long-term existence of minorities and immigrants in our regions has been an issue concerning many European societies. On the one hand, these people are facing integration problems while dreaming of having a better life, and on the other hand, the societies they are expecting mercy from have strong prejudices and even racist thoughts, which eventually affect the welfare and comfort of both sides. Although it is always possible to live together in peace, persistent racist acts disrupt the realization of that fantasy. Fortunately, the power of arts is so strong that it can help overcome the problem. For this reason, using arts as a tool to discover and appreciate cultural diversities is the basis of our project, which focuses on gathering people together to break prejudices and increasing harmony of the societies we live in. The project mainly aims at using the unifying power of arts to break prejudices; encouraging the social inclusion of disadvantaged groups; discovering the richness of arts cultures; contributing to the re-discovery of forgotten cultural characteristics; raising awareness of the value of European Cultural Heritage; boosting creativity and empowering skills of language, ICT, and communication; improving the abilities to work in transnational teams and establishing the project management skills. The project will last 24 months with the partnership of 5 partner schools. Project team including around 100 students and 10 teachers and administrators will participate in 5 exchanges. 50 disadvantaged students will be included in mobilities and more than 7000 people are expected to benefit from the project indirectly. Before exchanges, participants will be guided to complete the preparation activities and informed about the culture and law of the host countries. Legal requirements (passports, consent forms, etc) will be handled with the lead of contact persons. Participants will receive psychological support and guidance from the project team all the time and they will be informed about their role in the project activities. Meetings will be held before, during and after exchanges to make arrangements for successful management. Partners will make presentations and discussions where they will introduce their cultures; the great people in their histories, the games their children and young people play, their traditional dances, music, musical instruments, arts and famous artists. Before each exchange, the students will conduct questionnaires to discover the prejudices of their people towards the people of the host countries. During the exchanges, they will discuss about the results of the questionnaires and make suggestions to break the prejudices. With an aim to learn more about each others' cultures, the participants will organize competitions on cooking, dancing and painting. There will also be 'Stop Racism' poster competition and 'Best Things About Us' photograph competition, which will contribute to the elimination of racism and the appreciation of cultural diversity. The preparations of video presentations about local dishes and Unesco's World Heritage Sites will improve the ICT skills as well as increasing the sense of curiosity about other cultures. The traditional dishes, games, dances, music and arts booklets, the Unesco's World Heritage Sites brochure, the project corner, website, leaflet, logo, tshirt, calender and annual magazine 'Mosaic of Cultures' together with the exhibitions, mini concert, fashion show and dance performance will increase the visibility of the project and attract attention of the local people as well as social and local media, which will contribute to the dissemination of the project results. The presentations about the experiences of participants and project results to the staff and students who doesn't participate in the project will be held at the end of each exchange and pass the projects results to more people. The Memory Book, to be filled in by all participants at the end of each exchange will remain as a remembrance after the end of the project. It will motivate its readers to be a part of transnational projects. The magazine 'Mosaic of Cultures' will contribute a lot to the sustainability of the project as it will continue to be produced even after the project is completed. The project website will continue to be available to everyone after the project period is over. The project activities will continue in the eTwinning platform with more partners and more students. The project will help all participants integrate better in their societies, appreciate cultural diversities throughout Europe and live together in peace, use creativity to fight against racism, improve their competences in ICT and languages and skills of teamwork and cooperation in transnational teams. As a result of their successful social inclusion and increased academic performance, the chances of a better future will rise up.
Using arts as a tool to discover and appreciate cultural diversities was the basis of our project. In this project, we specifically focused on gathering people together to break prejudices and increasing harmony of the societies we lived in. Our project mainly aimed at using the unifying power of arts to break prejudices; encouraging the social inclusion of disadvantaged groups; discovering the richness of arts cultures; contributing to the re-discovery of forgotten cultural characteristics; raising awareness of the value of European Cultural Heritage; boosting creativity and empowering skills of language, ICT, and communication; improving the abilities to work in transnational teams and establishing the project management skills. The project was meant to last 24 months, however; the period was extended to 36 months due to some restrictions resulting from the world-wide pandemic. It was carried out with the partnership of 5 partner schools. 50 disadvantaged students were included in mobilities and about 7000 people benefited from the project indirectly. Project teams including around 100 students and 10 teachers and administrators participated in 5 exchanges, the last of which was a virtual mobility. However, although it was a virtual mobility, we were able to complete all the tasks we had initially planned, except for filling in the 'Memory Book'. Instead of using the memory book, we got online written feedback from participants. All our activities in virtual mobility were adapted to online, such as leading online discussions, making online presentations and creating an exhibition room and visiting that room using Zoom application. Before exchanges, participants were guided to complete the preparation activities and informed about the culture and law of the host countries. Legal requirements (passports, consent forms, etc) were handled with the lead of contact persons. Participants received psychological support and guidance from the project team any time they needed and they were regularly informed about their role in the project activities. Meetings were held before, during and after exchanges to make practical arrangements for a successful management. Partners made presentations and took part in discussions to introduce their cultures; the great people in their histories, the games their children and young people play, their traditional dances, music, musical instruments, arts and famous artists. Before each exchange, the students conducted questionnaires to discover the prejudices of their people towards the people of the host countries. During the exchanges, they discussed about the results of the questionnaires and made suggestions to break the prejudices. With an aim to learn more about each others' cultures, the participants organized competitions on cooking, dancing and painting. There were also be 'Stop Racism' poster competition and 'Best Things About Us' photograph competition, which contributed to the elimination of racism and the appreciation of cultural diversity. The preparations of video presentations about local dishes and UNESCO's World Heritage Sites improved the ICT skills as well as increasing the sense of curiosity about other cultures. The traditional dishes, games, dances, music and arts booklets, the UNESCO's World Heritage Sites brochure, the project corner, website, leaflet, logo, t-shirt, calendar and annual magazine 'Mosaic of Cultures' together with the exhibitions, mini concert, fashion show and dance performance increased the visibility of the project and attracted attention of the local people as well as social and local media, which contributed to the dissemination of the project results. The presentations about the experiences of participants and project results to the staff and students who couldn't participate in the project were held at the end of each exchange and passed the project results to more people. The Memory Book, which was filled in by all participants at the end of each exchange remains as a remembrance although the project is finished. It has already started motivating its readers to be a part of transnational projects in the future. The magazine 'Mosaic of Cultures' has contributed a lot to the sustainability of the project as it continues to be produced even after the project is completed. The project website continues to be available to everyone. The project activities will hopefully continue in the eTwinning platform with more partners and more students. Overall, we believe that the project helped our participants integrate better in their societies, appreciate cultural diversities throughout Europe and live together in peace, use creativity to fight against racism, improve their competences in ICT and languages and skills of teamwork and cooperation in transnational teams. As a result of their successful social inclusion and increased academic performance, we expect that the chances of a better future will rise up for them.