Nowadays in Europe folk heritage and traditional rural culture are disappearing, which is a pressing issue due to urbanization and globalization all over the world. Recent generations have already lost their roots and they have no contact with the traditional folk culture anymore. We truly believe cultural heritage is not only about preserving identity and history. Cultural heritage is a universal value shaping our personality and defining our daily lives. It is an important expression of cultural diversity – thus preserving it and passing it on to future generations is really important. The key of fostering change and reversing this tendency is in youth’s education. School education in Hungary has serious prestige problems, which is a general issue in other European countries as well. Music education could be a platform for sharing folk music and heritage with current generations but the classes are underestimated by students, parents and even by the teachers. Undervaluation comes from the lack of modernization during the last decades. Students need to get information by a channel they already use and understand – the tools of digital technology. Our project Folk_ME – Folk Music Education for Future Generations gives a niche solution to save folk heritage in Europe with a new methodology for teaching folk music in schools. The strong pillar of our methodology is a digital toolkit inspired by Polyphony – Collection of Disappearing European Cultural Heritage project’s research and archive. We want to develop our project together with experienced education and music professionals in order to have a real and actual answer for the threatening disappearance of folk heritage. International cooperation is an exceptional tool to merge knowledge, share best practices and develop the new form of folk music education. The main objective of this project is to design, test and implement a new, adaptable model which could be further used and developed in other national contexts as well. Our desired intent is to reintegrate the knowledge of our partners and their cultural heritage to the society through education not only in Hungary but in other European countries as well. That is why we chose the most relevant partners to achieve our goals. Our strong professional partnership comes from both academic, public and private sectors and from the field of education. The well-known Sibelius Academy – University of Arts Helsinki gives us a considerable amount of experience in education and academic know-how as well as the Hungarian Institute of Musicology. Piranha Arts Consulting gives its significant network and Ivan Honchar Museum its folk heritage knowledge and real experience in using digital archive in non-formal education besides many more values added to our project. The final output – a digital tool and pilot curricula and methodologies – will merge the three main pillars researched during the project period: - Integrating new technology in music education and adopting it to the digital shift - Integrating traditions and wider international context in the high school folk music education - Adopting new educational methodologies in the folk music curricula based on already existing academic researches
We ensured mobility and intercultural dialogue for educator professionals during the project as they attended a methodology meetings together. Professionals could share and discuss their experiences. They have built the methodology of the project. The goal of the meeting was also to strengthen the profiles of the professions. The outcome of the transnational cooperation is a toolkit (methodology and digital tool) with wide and international access to the results of our project, making it versatile and easily adaptable for different European countries. The main result of the partnership is an intellectual output: a new, adaptable methodology for teaching folk music creatively, integrating and actively using the newly developed digital tool. Within this cooperation, we intend to improve the partners' skills and capabilities in order to strengthen the profile of the music teaching profession what works for the protection of our European intangible cultural heritage. The concrete goals were to develop and test a pilot version of the platform with 4 audio-visual recordings from Ukraine, Hungary and Finland. The platform allows to use the recordings in many creative ways.
The whole idea’s core was to spread a toolkit and a methodology for teachers with which they can easily pass on European cultural heritage to their pupils. Music education has a wide range of skill development effect, of which Hungarian school education does not take advantage. Students can not experience the virtue of music education not just because they are not enjoying classes but the toolkit of the educators a strong deficiency (Possibilities for renewal of music education, Janurik Márta,2018). The most important deficit is about sharing knowledge with students in a way that is not suitable for their understanding of our contemporary world. The modernization of educators' tool kit could solve basic problems. Our project ‘Folk ME – Folk Music Education for Future rations shared not just an idea but a specific toolkit for teachers working in the field. Developed a digital toolkit and react to one of the most important needs of our target group - teachers and students in the music education, as according to researches, music education does not use digital technology in practice. As a goal of our project, we decised to contribute to higher quality of music education in Hungary and other European countries.