Cultural heritage is the most universally valuable resource in the world. European communities are facing some problems in terms of population change and migration .Our project “ eXploring eXperiencing Xpreading European Heritage” aims to improve cultural education and to transform these challenges into positive outcomes for cohesion and well being, to foster greater unity of students, teachers and local communities in Europe. It also aims to provide participants a better understanding of European cultures and their interaction with non-European cultures and societies to improve inter-cultural dialogue and mutual understanding so that they will be more engaged protecting common culture. The project focuses on getting people more interested in their cultural heritage, reinforcing social identity and cohesion on European basis. It provides unity between pupils and teachers in six countries: Turkey, Hungary, Spain, France,ıtaly and Germany. The partners in the project have different social and economic backgrounds. That enables us a cultural diversity across Europe. Our project aims to involve as many participants as possible. Students(14-18 years), teachers, other school staff, parents, other schools, partner institutions, local educational authorities, Ministry of Education, National Agencies, anyone who is interested on the topic will be involved in our project. Our project is compatible with the "Engage, Connect, Empower" policy of EU Youth Strategy. It aims to encourage young people to participate in democratic life, to gather youngster together across Europe and beyond to promote intercultural dialogue. The raised awareness towards the environment and cultural heritage in youth and local community will promote the development of their personalities. The key objective of the project is to create a social identity and cohesion for the future European youngsters through culture and creativity. It will also contribute to provide a better understanding of our common cultural heritage and enhance multicultural dialogue between partners. It aims to enhance tolerance and peace among participants from different gender, background, rage, religion, belief, etc(Treaty of EU). Our project will contribute to raise awareness towards the protecting world’s cultural and natural heritage in accordance with the Unesco Convention. The project will provide individuals to get familiar with the richness of cultural diversity and increase their curiosity and knowledge towards other cultures. Our aim is to promote positive attitude towards xenophobia, social exclusion and intolerant attitudes towards ethnic and religious minorities. Our project is quite comprehensive.The activities of the project will focus on natural and historical heritage; traditions and costumes; music and dance; language, legends, myths and folk heroes; art and handcrafts; sports and games; traditional cuisine. Each partner will organize seminars during the mobilities in their country. (TR)Culture and Globalization; (HU)Preserving our cultural heritage and Fostering Creativity; (ES)Living Culture; (FR) Cultural Barriers to Communication; (IT) United in Diversity; (DE)Cultural Diversity is our richness. Seminars will be broadcasted live and online on twinspace. After each seminar, the booklets will be prepared. The core point of our project is youngsters, who are safeguardians of our common cultural heritage. Our students will actively participate in all activities during the project. Our project will enable students lifelonging abilities and knowledge. It will promote the role of culture in strengthening freedom of expression and democratisation internationally. Our project is based on innovative and interdiciplianary teaching methods leading to a comprehensive approach while communicating and cooperating with other European partners. Ouestionnaries, interviews, group discussions, face to face conversations, project team meetings, project management team meetings, observations will be used to monitor and evaluate the project by each partner school. There will a continuous monitoring and evaluation process so that we can assess the on-going project. The outputs of the project will be shared on e-twinning, the project website and the social media pages of the project. It will contribute to enhance awareness of European values among pupils, parents and communities. Other local educational organizations as well as the people who are interested in the project will also benefit from the outputs of the project. Other dissemination tools are meetings,interviews, essays, workshops, posters, brochures, digital project magazine, booklets, DVDs, CDs, Erasmus+ Project Corner, newspapers, local magazines, national TV channels, radios and other media vehicles,etc. Thanks to dissemination activities, our project will be visible and sustainable at local, national and international level.
Our project sees cultural heritage as a resource. Within and outside Europe we are confronted with a wealth of cultural wealth. Although our project deals with our shared cultural heritage within Europe, we are also concerned with dealing with other, more distant cultures. Practicing using Europe as an example is intended to enable participants to seek exchange with non-European cultures and to be open-minded towards them. Especially in times of migration, we are constantly faced with new and unknown cultures. Our students experience this every day in their learning groups. Here it is important to find a way of dealing with one another. Our project goals are also derived from this context. By getting to know their European cultural heritage, participants can also be more open-minded towards non-European cultures. They develop their identity through creative engagement with their culture. This is intended to promote personal development. Participation in cultural exchange should promote participation in democratic processes. Another goal was to integrate as many participants as possible. It turned out that not only teachers and participating students were involved, but parents, colleagues and numerous classmates were also very interested. In order to achieve the goals just mentioned, we carried out a variety of activities. At each meeting, the cultural peculiarities of the partners were presented by the students. We learned a lot about the music, languages and literature, art and crafts, sport and, last but not least, the cuisines of the countries. In addition, at each meeting, students presented their thoughts on topics such as “stereotypes” or “prejudices”. Each country also made it possible to visit important cultural sights together. Monitoring was an important component. Agreements could be made and checked through video conferences and chat groups. Since our project took place under Corona conditions, meetings in the partner countries were initially not possible. The participants were initially denied the chance to get to know each other in person. In the exchange between the colleagues involved, other forms of encounter than initially planned could and had to be created. Ultimately, everyone involved was happy and motivated to accept the alternatives that were developed. We made the best of it. Unfortunately, the French school had to end its participation in the project early for organizational reasons. Our work results can be found on Etwinning. The result was numerous presentations and texts, booklets and a large collaborative painting. You can also view our project website, the social media page. We hope that this will further disseminate our goals and results. The international meetings showed that the students were able to quickly immerse themselves in a multicultural dialogue. The joint activities quickly led to the participants exchanging ideas with each other. By presenting their own cultural characteristics, people started talking and discovered similarities. Of course, long-term results such as tolerance and peace cannot be determined at this point. Nevertheless, we hope to have sensitized the students to xenophobia, discrimination and exclusion.