Covid-19 has initiated a new era to the way we live, learn and interact. Schools are invited to change the way they function, shifting their methods to digitalisation, sending children at home and interacting with them online in an attempt to retain the school main schedule whilst losing touch with more social and creative activities when arts subjects in schools in several countries have been eliminated from the curricula. At the same time the Culture and Creative Sector (CCS), a sector with a major socio-economic contribution, has been hit hard by the pandemic while being already in a difficult position with little recovery plan since. In this respect, creativity scholars are advocating for years towards incorporating teaching for creativity at all levels of education. Our needs analysis indicates that teachers are in need of professional development that will enable them to apply creativity in lessons and establish learning environments that encourage creative growth. Therefore, responding directly to their needs, Social &Cultural Innovation Labs (SCIL) will attempt to bring the CCS back to schools but on a new basis of a cross-sectoral, purpose and community driven partnership, building capacities for teachers and creativity and innovation for students. To accomplish this mission, the project is setting the following objectives: Reinforce the development of creativity at school by creating a framework and a curriculum for establishing cross-sectoral partnerships among schools and CCS; train teachers of secondary education on applying arts-based educational tools, such as digital art and augmented reality, on a new collaborative, learner-centered, challenge based and purpose driven approach; equip students with the necessary arts-based tools and competences to collaborate with multidisciplinary teams and develop creative and innovative solutions around societal challenges. Therefore, teachers and students of Secondary Education are within our primary target groups as well as CCS professionals and local communities who will be actively involved in SCIL in the 4 partner countries. Intellectual Outputs foreseen for the SCIL project are: 1. SCIL Student arts-based Curriculum for introducing and applying digital art and campaigning tools with real hands-on case studies 2. SCIL Teachers’ Training programme for the development of teachers’ competences and the methodological integration of new forms of art and advocacy tools in curricula, leading to social innovation 3. SCIL Audiovisual Hub with tutorials, ready-to-use materials, step-by-step methodology and testimonies of SCIL participants 4. SCIL Interactive Platform, with dialogue forum and the creation of an online community of students, teachers and artists A joint staff training is foreseen for teachers and artists as well as multiplier events in al countries. The project implementation is structured around the 4 IOs and their implementation is planned for 24 months. All activities carried out serve the production of the IOs that will unfold in the following phases: – preparation – design and development– testing-evaluation and fine-tuning. The production of the above results will ultimately lead to the following long-term expected impact: Support students in acquiring and developing new age necessary skills that will transform them into up-to-date, creative and active citizens; enhance teachers’ professional development by supporting them to apply innovative interdisciplinary teaching practices related to creative citizenship education; engage students, teachers, schools, artistic groups and associations, parents, community stakeholders and policy makers to build an ecosystem that exposes and encourages children evolve more creative competences using tools from the CCS to solve problems, change perspective and gain confidence; building long-standing partnerships between schools and the community; advocating for updated arts education in schools. The main exploitation goal for the future is to ensure that SCIL outputs will be utilised after the project completion by secondary education schools in the 4 partnering countries and also beyond so as to foster the next generation of creative changemakers in Europe.
Through the implementation of the project, SCIL achieved the following objectives: -Reinforced the development of creativity at schools by creating a space and curriculum for establishing cross-sectoral partnerships among schools and CCS. -Trained teachers of secondary education on applying arts-based educational tools, such as digital art and augmented reality, using a new collaborative, learner-centered, challenge-based, and purpose-driven approach. -Equipped students with the necessary arts-based tools and competences to collaborate with multidisciplinary teams and develop creative and innovative solutions around societal challenges. SCIL’s educational tools enabled participating students to develop digital art-based campaigns, using SCIL's interactive international platform, to raise awareness of issues of concern in their community.
This project emerged from the need to connect the Education and Culture & Creative Sectors (CCS), two sectors that were hit hard by the pandemic, which initiated a new era in the way we live, learn, and interact. Schools changed the way they used to function, shifting their methods to digitalization, sending children home, and interacting with them online in an attempt to retain the school's main schedule. This led to a loss of social and creative activities, especially as arts subjects were removed from the curriculum in several countries during the pandemic. In this respect, creativity scholars had been advocating for years to incorporate teaching for creativity at all levels of education. Our needs analysis indicated that teachers were in need of professional development that would enable them to apply creativity in lessons and establish learning environments that encourage creativity. Therefore, in direct response to teachers’ needs, Social & Cultural Innovation Labs (SCIL) aimed to connect CCS with secondary schools, based on a cross-sectoral and community-driven partnership. The goal was to build capacities for teachers and foster creativity and innovation for students.