"Let‘s share our heritage, our culture, our future" is a common project shared by four quite different schools from Italy, Lithuania, Portugal and Germany. The participating schools differ regarding their profiles as well as their educational objectives - ranging from educating all students from one region to preparing students for university studies (even offering pre-university courses) including offering vocational training. In addition all four schools are situated in different European regions – thus having diverse historical backgrounds. These diverging aspects constitute the strengths of our project as all participants share a strong connnection with Europe which from our point of view requires constant exchange in order to form a truly common European heritage. The inspiration for this project came from the European Year of Cultural Heritage 2018 which has made us aware of the enormous importance of our cultural heritage as all identities as individuals, regions, or even countries have their origin in our respective cultural background. However, when aiming at a common Europe based on tolerance and understanding contact with as well as appreciation for each other`s cultural idiosyncrasies is absolutely vital. Therefore all participants – students, teachers, club members etc. – are going to engage in sharing their cultural heritage reflecting on common as well as diverging aspects by (re)discovering traditions such as singing, dancing, cooking, writing and handicraft and their relevance for our past and present. These experiences will lead to future understanding based on the participants‘ positive attitude resulting from working together, discovering how valuable differences might be, sharing emotions. If only counting those students and teachers traveling, there are 18 students and 6-9 teachers per participating school. However, through the different workshops and activities up to a couple of hundred students and at least 20 teachers per school will be reached. At the last level – as part of the schools` curricula – all students and all teachers will be actively involved i.e. 3244 students and 409 teachers. Furthermore local clubs as well as the local public will take part in the activities offered by the schools. We expect our project to have a strong positive impact on all students and teachers at the participating schools and even beyond. Of course, students and teachers actively taking part get to know different regions of Europe, improve their language as well as their IT skills using digital media, make friends and international contacts whereas teachers broaden their knowledge and their educational skills. As it is impossible to send all students and teachers abroad those students and teachers travelling and taking part in specialised workshops - involving local clubs and institutions - become experts and serve as disseminators through classroom activities, exhibitions, events. Additionally the public is being informed by the local media and invited to experience our project activities. Integrating the two topics Èurope`and `cultural heritage` into the curricula guarantees a lasting effect on the participating schools by enabling students and teachers alike to reflect thoroughly on this part of our identity. Therefore every project meeting focuses on a specific aspect for which an e-book is produced documenting the results of this part of the project - e.g. collecting recipes or songs. These e-books allow others motivational access to this part of the project. Looking at our project as a whole its most important long-term effect will be in the participants realizing that Europe with its diverse cultural heritage is our common living space. Thus our project enables students and teachers alike to find their own position in the current discourse regarding cultural identy.
The project "Let`s share our heritage, our culture, our future" was carried out by four schools that teach the same age group of students, but are otherwise very different in many respects, namely in the school profile, in the selection of students and in the objectives of the educational programs, which range from the education of all students in a region to preparation for specific occupational fields and preparation for university entrance to elite support with early study components. Furthermore, the schools involved are geographically far apart and have correspondingly extremely different historical backgrounds in their respective regions. This strong divergence was a special motivation for the participating schools for a project on common cultural heritage, in order to understand to what extent we are one Europe despite all the differences, and we wanted to build understanding for each other by illuminating the backgrounds of the differences and the lived diversity in an appreciative way. We entered into a lively exchange with students, teachers and other participants in order to sound out what the individual, the common, but also the different cultural heritage of the participants consists of. Current events were discussed, traditions were (re)discovered and shared with the other participants in the truest sense of the word by learning traditional cultural practices such as singing, dancing, cooking, writing and artistic design and experiencing the significance of such activities and products in the past and present. During meetings in the respective schools, participants from the other schools always traveled to their hosts, and at each meeting a different theme was on the program, in addition to the usual activities of a group dynamic and tourist nature, in which the group dealt once each with literature, with cooking, with singing and with dance. Different workshops and joint work phases were organized, during which the students, but also the teachers involved, informed each other about the respective cultural heritage, brought it closer to each other through re-enactment (e.g. the recipes brought along were cooked and tasted in mixed groups, or the songs were sung together in all languages, etc.). The main result of each meeting was a book, which the participants can use later to carry out these activities, but also other school members or outsiders can use it, for example, to practice dances of different countries. Many other preparatory and follow-up activities in the individual countries were also part of the project, e.g. cooking in the schools or workshops on song accompaniment with the guitar. Other meetings were held exclusively for teachers, during which joint training sessions were held in areas that fit the content of the project, such as music and dance pedagogy. Due to the well-known situation with the Corona epidemic, project activities often had to be postponed or changed in their original planning, but after the project extension we only slightly changed the content of the activities and, for example, sang with masks or bought the common food at celebrations instead of preparing it ourselves. In some cases, however, the situation even led to new activities, e.g., there was a Christmas gift campaign in which large packages were packed for all participants, some with personal letters, which definitely strengthened the personal bond. All in all, the project can be described as very successful and the many small results cannot be listed here in detail. Therefore, also for the future we expect that all participants will have a great further connection to the European cultural heritage and can profit in the long run from knowledge and skills from the most different areas, cultural techniques, foreign languages and IT knowledge. Also information of the respective school public and networking with local institutions are a good long-term effect. The evaluation of the attitude towards cultural heritage among participants and a comparison group, which can be viewed on the project homepage just like most of the results of the project, also impressively proves this. Of course, in retrospect, there are always points that could have been better organized and implemented. However, the interruption was also associated with a lot of personnel changes and, of course, with quite complex working procedures and limited working time available, optimal performance is sometimes not guaranteed. But overall we draw a very positive conclusion and are glad and grateful to have had this opportunity for intensive exchange. Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)