30 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall (and the end of the Cold War) Europe now enjoys a significantly higher level of democracy with greater freedom of movement and speech. However this is not a guaranteed status quo. Walls are still around and new ones are constantly being built. The discussions around Brexit show how populism can quickly gain large support. People are often not very interested in looking more deeply into where we Europeans come from and what the causes of our current issues are. #shiftingwalls would like to open this dialogue. Its aim is to produce and share materials for teachers within history, political science, language learning and art focussing on the last 30 years of Europe’s histories. The core activity will be for secondary students to work on photo stories. These stories will capture glimpses of places or objects and memories from eye witnesses. In this way they will take first steps in understanding historiography or the mediation of history. #shiftingwalls is designed to cover thirty years of history in three overlapping themes: • “The Fall of the Wall“ (1989/1990, the end of the Cold War) • “From 1990 to 2020“ (30 year period since the fall of the wall) • “History Now” (new walls we are facing today) We will develop a Teaching Toolkit for each theme with task sheets for teachers and students, video tutorials and other teacher training materials. The photo story of each theme will be one minute long and will include five to ten photos as well as text (in the form of titles) or a sound track or video format. Students can use their smartphones for production but could also work with cameras and computers. The students´ photo stories will be shared on social media, focussing on the popular visual media tool Instagram. The project’s name will be the hashtag of all activities - #shiftingwalls (there will also be alternative options according to teachers’ interest). Using students’ own language and genre is important for stimulating curiosity and increasing motivation for the subject. The #shiftingwalls multidisciplinary team comprises two universities, two non-profit associations, an educational foundation and an innovative school. Together the team comes from five different European countries: Bulgaria, Greece, Spain, Lithuania and importantly two from the former East and West part of Berlin, Germany. The material for teachers will include an educational foundation as well as class methodologies, technical support, information about copyright and privacy. Initial ideas will be piloted by a network of at least 25 school classes and will then be re-worked and finalised. Compact teacher training workshops will be developed and implemented and six case studies will also be created in order to give teachers a better insight into the implementation process. Promotion will be a key focus of the project. Two outputs will increase the visibility of the project: 1. A series of timeline posters with selected photos taken by the students will be shared online and will be ready for educators to use in classrooms or at a local exhibition. 2. A printed visual booklet “Wall Stories” will present key ideas and will serve as both as teaching aid as well as a promotional tool to get other teachers involved. All material produced will be available online as Open Educational Resources with a Creative Commons license on the project website as well as on partner and associated portals as a sustainable outcome. Ideas will spread through social media including Instagram, Facebook, YouTube and Twitter. The project will organise one Multiplier Event in each of the countries involved as well as additional teacher training workshops. An associated network of additional schools, training institutions, universities, teacher associations and regional authorities will further spread the ideas. Contacts to local and regional media will be pursued for additional promotion. A concluding highlight will be the exhibition of the timeline posters at the Fotogalerie Friedrichshain during the closing event in Berlin in the autumn of 2021.
Our aim is to inspire students (11-18 years) to engage with history by producing personal stories using creative photography. By allowing different perspectives, including their own, they learn to deal critically with current and historical information as well as empathise with other realities. The visual stories created in each country are shared mainly on Instagram, the most popular social media tool among young people. The project’s Instagram channel “shiftingwalls_eu” serves as the main platform to present the diversity of stories and encourage an open dialogue across Europe. In order to achieve change we wanted to guide teachers into implementing new methods into their practice: fostering media competence and encompassing personal histories. shifting walls, mainly designed for secondary schools, could be implemented in various subjects such as history, political science, citizenship/civics, language learning, IT, ethics or art. The shifting wall team wanted to produce and share materials for teachers that cover the last thirty years of European history.
“shifting walls offers a personal way of dealing with issues and stories - full of European experiences and feelings where others are invited to step into these narratives. The project provides a way of gaining understanding not through competition but empathy.” Maria Stoicheva, Vice Rector, Sofia University The Erasmus+ project “shifting walls - European History through the Eyes of the Young” connects recent European history with media education. Today, over 30 years since the fall of the Berlin wall, Europe now enjoys a significantly higher level of democracy with significantly greater freedom of movement and speech. However, as has become recently very clear, this is not a guaranteed status quo. Walls are still around and new ones are constantly being built. In our experience many young people know very little about any recent history. School history lessons are often seen as uninteresting, irrelevant and lacking in any active engagement and creativity. At the same time we see a clear growth in interest for populist parties. It would seem that many young people have lost faith in democracy. We also still see the urgent importance for media literacy, for keeping up and connecting with young people’s lifestyles.