The project 'From old to new and back again: studying European cultural heritage through time' (EHON) is aimed at creating extra educational, cultural and social value by cooperating on cultural heritage, old and more recent, with 2 Art Study Programs in Belgium and Italy. In recent years, the value of a common cultural heritage has risen and can be regarded as a glue that connects several aspects of our society. We not only share cultural elements, such as food, language or traditions, but we also share different forms of art through time. By working together with art students on different forms of visual and architectural arts we want to illustrate the differences and similarities, not only to each other but also to a broader public. This small scale project is especially aimed at creating joint visual products that illustrate cultural heritage of Belgium and Italy. By looking at different traditions such as ancient fresco’s, medieval painting, Art Nouveau or modernistic building from different perspective in time and place, we want to show the influences which our cultures have had on each other and still have. We will make students work together on creating art and artistic products that represent these similarities and differences of our European cultural heritage. By cooperating and discussing the artistic process, students will get a better insight in this matter and will also increase their personal skills and knowledge on this topic. This is a one-year project in which the national cultural heritage is taken as a starting point. During an online project via eTwinning and 2 exchange weeks, our arts- students will get together virtually and in real life, to confront these examples of national heritage and work on some joint artistic products. The result of this project will be a mixed artefact, a collection of cartoons and a small scale exhibition, which will be shown at each of the institutions for an internal and external public. Cooperation with stakeholders from cultural heritage networks, art networks and other areas of education will give an extra dimension to this project. We aim at involving as many students from the art departments as we can in internal actions and on eTwinning. Their ages will range from 14 till 17 years old and at least 30 students of every school will travel abroad. In these exchange weeks, students will work together in mixed groups to create art work, explore cultural heritage and develop personal portfolio’s. This project will enable close cooperation between students and their teachers at the own institution but also with their counterparts in Italy and/or Belgium, online and face to face. We hope it will result in an increase in personal skills of the participants, a more innovative approach in the art programs and a more positive attitude towards Arts studies in general. Because, as Steve Berry said it: “A concerted effort to preserve our heritage is a vital link to our cultural, educational, aesthetic, inspirational and economic legacies – all of the things that quite literally make us who we are.”
The project 'From old to new and back again: studying European cultural heritage through time' (EHON) was a cooperation between an Art Study Program in Belgium and one in Italy. Its aim was to cooperate on the topic of cultural heritage to show the students that our cultures share certain values and also differ in others. In this project students would not only get to know the other culture, but also their own in a more profound matter. The first half of the project was more or less carried out as planned. There was a preparatory visit from the Belgian teachers to the Italian school in September 2019. The Itallian teachers had already visited the Belgian school the year before so the preparation phaze in each institution went smoothly. The teachers prepared the students for the project, prepared the necessary teaching activities, carried out research on the topics,… Also an Etwinning project was started up and its Twinspace was used to share some activities at the home institutions. The first leg of the exchange, in which the Belgian students visited Palermo from the 10th to the 15th of February 2020, was prepared and carried out. Only one week later Italy went into their first lockdown. During this first exchange week, students were immersed in Italian culture, art and traditions. The Belgian students stayed in host families which maximized the cultural confrontation: living in an Italian family for a week, often with family members that sometimes only spoke Italian, being confronted with a more tactile and extravert family life, trying out traditional food and drinks, often made deep impressions on our students. The students got acquainted with culture in Palermo and worked together on the project with their Italian counterparts. After a one-day touring of the most famous landmarks in Palermo, they created a joint comic book together and got an insight into different ways of teaching art. It turned out there were quite some differences in the way artistic subjects were taught in Italy and in Belgium, which made the learning experience also from this point of view richer and more in depth. The second exchange week, in which the Italian students would have visited Belgium, was unfortunately cancelled due to Covid. The pandemic situation at that moment didn’t allow any travel and schools were closed at that moment in both countries. We applied for an extension of the project, hoping to organise the exchange in the fall, but since the Corona-situation never improved drastically, the mobilities were nog carried out . We still tried to start up some joint initiatives, but teaching was mainly online complete focus lay on reducing the learning delays from the previous year. Hence the student groups did work on sharing cultural heritage and showed to the other group what they had done at school (e.g. a Sicilian cookbook, a Sicilian buffet, a mixed art project on old-new heritage, personalized heritage postcards,…), but they were not able to work together on the second outcome of a joint exhibition. Again due to covid-restrictions the final exhibitions could not be carried out and dissemination of project results was mainly carried out online. We still are convinced though that this project has been a true learning experience for the students involved: they became aware of the cultural heritage surrounding them, they were confronted with a different cultural mindset during the family host-stays, they learned about different kinds of art and cooperated with other future artist. Most of all though, we think they have grown on a personal level: they have become more independent, more self-confident and have grown in their reflection and cooperation skills. The positive effects are evident in the results of the Questionnaire both Belgian and Italian students have answered at the end of the project. More than 80% of those who answered are more aware of belonging to Belgian or Italian culture while almost 90% think their feeling of being European has increased. According to their personal experience 70% think communicating in English has improved after participating in the project; 37% have developed personal relationships while 43% feel they have become more self-confident. Also for the schools themselves this was an interesting project: the art division have gotten to know each other better, the ties with external organisations such as the heritage service of the Annuntiates and the Palermo Museums were intensified and the educational value of cultural heritage has become clearer. The ties between the partner institutions will continue through a newly approved KA2-application and the long-term cooperation possibilities with heritage players have been specified in a new development plan. In Belgium, also a new application together with the heritage service has been approved under Eramsus+. So we hope this project will certainly continue to leave its traces in the coming years.