The rising number of disadvantaged students has been an issue concerning many European schools for years. Many students still fail or drop out of school early especially in culturally, socially and economically deprived contexts. Fortunately, the power of art is so strong that it can help overcome the problem and we will use art as a tool to discover, appreciate and enhance the values of diversity and inclusion, which are the basis of our project. The project mainly aims at using the power of arts to break prejudices; encouraging the social inclusion of disadvantaged groups; tackling early school leaving; discovering the richness of the European cultures; raising awareness of the value of European Cultural Heritage; boosting creativity and empowering skills of language, ICT, and communication; improving the abilities to work in transnational teams and establishing the project management skills. The specific objectives of the project: ● To present cultural elements by means of visual aids: drama activities, exhibitions, photographs, folk art, catalogues, and brochures. ● To find a common language by means of art. ● To share and integrate different ways of thinking and common feelings through art. ● To inform the students about the cultural, artistic and spiritual values of other countries and to determine them to be individually and collectively active. ● To prove to the students that the artists and creators in general, have been inspired by nature and life itself, thus making them aware that the environment in which we live is very important and that the community should be very responsive to this subject. ● Students will develop artistic abilities, will learn to use IT means in order to create the necessary materials for the project. The general objectives of the project: ● To encourage the participant schools to share the culture of their countries. ● To encourage the students and the teachers to create and develop their abilities for planning and initiating the activities of the project and using the informational and communicative technologies. ● To promote a modern national and European line and to offer authentic cultural values. ● To increase the interest for culture, for the national specific. ● To encourage the students to communicate in English and to develop their linguistic abilities by interacting with other students of different nationalities and cultures. During the exchanges, students will discuss about and make suggestions to break the prejudices. With an aim to learn more about each other’s' cultures, the participants will organize in transnational teams contests on music, dancing, sport, acting, photography and painting. Moreover, we will give students competences in journalism, ICT and languages. In each meeting students will actively discuss the topic of diversities/inclusion, and try to find solutions in order to make our societies a better and happier place to live in. We will use young people languages like rap or graffiti to approach very serious problems, in this way they will feel more confident and motivated. The forms of discrimination we want to focus on are racial, social, gender, religious, cultural discrimination. Students will be also encouraged to take part to international contests for schools like: ‘Yo! Fest’, ‘World nomads directors on the go’ and ‘I am European’. There will also be project contests like: 'Stop Racism' video competition, ‘Be diverse, be unique’ graffiti logo contest, 'Did you know?' music contest and ‘Shoot the difference’ photo contest which will contribute to reach project objectives and the dissemination of the project results. The preparation of video presentations will improve the ICT skills, the communication skills, the language skills as well as increasing the sense of curiosity about other cultures and new learning strategies. We think that these activities will all motivate students to stay at school and prevent the risk of early school drop out. The most important aspect of our methodology is that all activities and project steps are students centered through activities like role-plays, problem solving activities, teamwork, cooperative activities and project works, this will enable active participation and rise motivation levels. The project activities will contribute to its results and impact. Each meeting will have a public happening where meeting products will be shown to families, other schools, stakeholders. This will bring the project visibility together with the other project activities devoted to the dissemination of project results: project web page, etwinning project page, report on the schools web site, web magazine, broadcast on local tvs and newspapers of project activities and results. The project website will continue to be available to everyone after the project period is over. The project activities will continue in the eTwinning platform with more partners and more students.
The rising number of disadvantaged students has been an issue concerning many European schools for years. Many students still fail or drop out of school early especially in culturally, socially and economically deprived contexts. Fortunately, the power of art is so strong that it can help overcome the problem and we have used art as a tool to discover, appreciate and enhance the values of diversity and inclusion, which are the basis of our project. The project mainly aimed at using the power of arts to break prejudices; encourage the social inclusion of disadvantaged groups; tackle early school leaving; discover the richness of the European cultures; raise awareness of the value of European Cultural Heritage; boost creativity and empower skills of language, ICT, and communication; improve the abilities to work in transnational teams and establish project management skills. The specific objectives of the project are: To present cultural elements by means of visual aids: exhibitions, photographs, folk art, catalogues, and brochures. To find a common language by means of art. To share and integrate different ways of thinking and common feelings through art. To inform the students about the cultural, artistic and spiritual values of other countries and to determine them to be individually and collectively active. To prove to the students that the artists and creators in general, have been inspired by nature and life itself, thus making them aware that the environment in which we live is very important and that the community should be very responsive to this subject. The general objectives of the project are: To encourage the participant schools to share the culture of their countries. To encourage the students and the teachers to create and develop their abilities for planning and initiating the activities of the project and using the informational and communicative technologies. To promote the interest into different cultures. To promote authentic European cultural values. To encourage the students to communicate in English and to develop their linguistic abilities by interacting with other students of different nationalities and cultures. We implemented 6 LTTAs, during the exchanges, students discussed about and made suggestions to break the prejudices. With an aim to learn more about each other’s' cultures, the participants organized in transnational teams contests on music, sport, acting, photography and painting. Moreover, we gave students competences in journalism, ICT and languages. In each meeting students actively discussed the topic of diversities/inclusion, and tried to find solutions in order to make our societies a better and happier place to live in and to become role models. We used young people languages like visual arts or drama to approach very serious problems, in this way they felt motivated. Students were encouraged throughout the project to actively take part to project activities, to do so we organised project contests like: 'Stop Racism' video competition, ‘Be diverse, be unique’ poster contest and ‘Shoot the difference’ photo contest which contributed to reach project objectives and the dissemination of the project results. Moreover, we organised online meetings to implement project activities and to keep in touch. The preparation of video presentations improved the ICT skills, the communication skills, the language skills as well as increasing the sense of curiosity about other cultures and new learning strategies. We think that these activities motivated students to stay at school and prevented the risk of early school drop out. Participants at the end of this project wanted to to start new adventures in other project actions like trainings abroad. The most important aspect of our methodology was that all activities and project steps were students centered through activities like role-plays, problem solving activities, teamwork, cooperative activities and project works or interviews, that enabled active participation and rose motivation levels. The project activities contributed to its results and impact. Due to the pandemic not all planned public events could be implemented but we joined the Erasmus days, Europe Day and we also celebrated days like Discrimination day, International day of Remembrance and the International day against women’s violence on a school level and on a national level. This brought the project visibility, together with the other project activities devoted to the dissemination of project results: project web page, the twinspace, report on the schools web site, the magazine, the press articles and the Erasmus+ platform of results. The project website will continue to be available to everyone after the project period is over. The project activities will continue in the coordinator school with a partnership with the Accademia di Belle Arti of Frosinone that will organise open days with the topic “art for inclusion”.