I C U - Intercultural Creativity Unlimited The title of this European project refers to its twofold aims: Firstly, the project aims at providing the students with the opportunity to express themselves and their own cultures creatively in a European frame. This will also be beneficial for the teachers regarding their methodical approaches. Secondly, this project is meant to make the participants, students as well as teachers, aware of various European cultures - their differences as well as their similarities - , develop their understanding of each other and finally help them to consciously see the others: I C U = I see you. In times of increasingly self-centred national attitudes and tendencies to focus on one's own country's interests, we feel the need to encourage young people to be more open-minded towards the Euopean ideas and ideals. Meeting in person and working together will enable students to discover common grounds and common European values thus keeping them alive. So tribute will be paid to the European founding fathers, their ideas and ideals. In order to prepare students for a successful career, European schools' curricula often neglect creativity, but working this way offers chances not only with regard to hard skills, but also for the students' personal development. As a prerequisite it is necessary also for teachers to reflect and develop their methodical approaches into a more creative direction. The whole school community will therefore profit from this important process of implementing new methods. The common objectives of the six participating European schools from Austria, Germany, Greece, Portugal, Romania and Serbia are: - supporting individual students in acquiring and developing basic skills and key competences like action competence, intercultural competence, communication and social skills. They will gain these competences by working together in order to produce a common performance that deals with the different cultures and includes theatre, dance and music. - increasing knowledge and fostering intercultural understanding by examining and comparing different cultural aspects such as youth culture, family life, literature and history - developing new teaching skills by mutual exchange and inspiration while working together - increasing the level of digital competence by continuously working with eTwinning, various apps and applying filming techniques - improving language skills by constantly using English during the whole project As all participating schools are on different levels of experience with regard to European projects, ICT and working creatively, all schools will benefit by complementing each other, especially since all schools are open to new ideas. Our planned activities to meet the above mentioned objectives are: - a teacher training providing us with the necessary tools to work successfully on eTwinning and with apps as well as with filming equipment and techniques - four project meetings during which the students will work together on the above mentioned topics by innovative teaching methods enabling the students to live up to their creative potential - regular workshops (theatre, dance, music) at home between the project meetings to prepare those meetings - a constant exchange of ideas and interim results on eTwinning - a final project meeting at which all the results are combined in a final show presented live on stage, which will be filmed The most important concrete product of the project will be the creative output documented in the film of the final show. Further important results are: - development of the schools' programmes, lessons and extracurricular activities towards a more creative and European dimension - teachers' widened horizons and their enlarged methodical teaching repertoire which they are encouraged to spread among their colleagues - students' improved creative and personal skills including language and ICT - increased intercultural understanding enabling students to reflect on stereotypes and prejudice - deepened awareness of the value of a united Europe Potential longer-term benefits will be: - a more intercultural and creative focus within the participating school communities - more innovative teaching methods in lessons - having coped with the challenges of the project like performing on stage and staying with host families abroad, individual students will have developed self-confidence - students will be educated to European citizens who value and spread European ideas and ideals
Reflecting the title „ICU – Intercultural Creativity Unlimited“ our project had twofold aims, namely enabling all participants to express themselves creatively in a European frame and also making them aware of our European cultures. We hoped that this would lead to a better understanding of our differences and similarities and help to consciously see each other (I C U = I see you). We felt the necessity to set up a project like this as schools often neglect fostering creative skills in order to prepare students for careers in science or business. And, maybe this is even more important, we wanted to encourage the participants to be more open-minded towards European ideas and ideals. By getting to know each other and working together, common grounds could be discovered and valued which serves as a basis for a united Europe. The last months have proven that this is essential. The common objectives (and how they were met) of the six participating European schools from Austria, Germany, Greece, Portugal, Romania and Serbia were: -supporting individuals in acquiring action competence, intercultural competence, communication and social skills. This was achieved by working together in regular online-meetings, in which not only creative results were presented but also also talked about cultural topics as well as every-day life and problems, including solving them. Especially this last point, common problems in challenging Covid times and how to overcome them, fostered action competence. Having been able to meet in person at least twice (the teachers three times as there was a preparatory teachers´meeting in Austra) in Athens and Lüneburg and working together on performances (theatre, music and dance) promoted the development of the other mentioned skills and competences. -increasing intercultural understanding by examining and comparing cultural aspects such as youth culture, family life, literature and history. In the main, these points could also be covered despite the fact that not all mobilities could take place. This was mostly done online by presenting, comparing and discussing creative outputs as comics (based on questionnaires dealing with prejudice) and film clips (comparing European fairytales). Family life and traditions were discussed and came to life online such as cooking each others´ traditional family recipes and creating an artistic Christmas photobook. -developing new teaching skills by mutual exchange and inspiration while working together. Unfortunately, we were not as successful here as we had planned. Due to the special circumstances the teachers´ (online-) meetings were very often characterised by problem solving and not by inspiring each others´ teaching skills. -increasing the level of digital competence. As we communicated mainly online in all respects, all of us could improve our digital skills. Furthermore, the teachers got some training on various apps and filming techniques and on how to use eTwinning. -improving language skills. Due to our frequent and regular online meetings we could improve our language skills even more than expected. Products, results and long-term benefits of our project are: -in addition to the mentioned comics, film clips and the artistic Christmas photobook the most important concrete creative product is the final show and its filmic documentation -relevant results are the participants´ improved creative skills as well as ICT and language skills based on working creatively and constantly exchanging ideas, mostly online, and consequently, a significantly improved intercultural understanding -another result is a partly increasing, partly deepened awareness of Europe and its significance among the whole school community which can be noticed when looking on the interest in our new KA1 and KA2 projects. This can also be seen as a long-term benefit as the interest is still increasing -a vital long-term benefit, especially for the participating students, is the strengthening of their personal competences. Among others, they have gained a lot of self-confidence being able to cope with many challenges