Regarding the access to cultural and heritage resources and sites, the most prevalent situation is the following: * museums and other cultural sites have an important attendance gap. People with a high socio- economical and educational level are the majority of their public while those in disadvantage or with inclusion issues (such as disabled people, migrants, elderly, people with low qualifications...) don’t even consider cultural sites and heritage as a real valuable alternative in formal, non-formal and informal education; not even as a leisure resource. * access to so—called high culture of all citizenship is vital to guarantee inclusion, cohesion, sense of purpose, social participation and, in general, quality of democracy in all the different countries as well as the European project. Culture cannot be a means for segregation. * adult education, vocational and second opportunity centres have a great proportion of this target groups among their students. They need resources not only in literacy but also resources in terms of socio-cultural inclusion, active citizenship and, of course, digital competence which implies an added gap in itself. * the mentioned lifelong learning centres do not have a stable cooperation scheme and set methodology with museums, cultural and heritage sites of their community and scarcely make use of on-line resources. * technological development allows to foster cooperation processes and the creation of resources for all (universal accessibility and design) catering for diversity in an easy and useful way. * Design Thinking has shown itself as a powerful tool to develop and implement by means of multidisciplinary approaches, resources of value in mixed fields. Thus this project is has aimed to a strategic association in innovation that works towards the full and inclusive participation of groups at risk of exclusion by means of technological, on-line and universal accessibility resources, taking advantage of shared work with adult education centres to consider cultural and heritage resources a valuable means of inclusion and active social participation. We have also worked closely with relevant user groups in the different phases of the work (design, testing, etc). All this has resulted in 4 intellectual outputs: * CIMA (Cultural Information Made Accessible)- An open source free web app meant to provide accessible information for all. https://allureculture.eu/en/cima (in English, Spanish, Galician, Portuguese, Icelandic, Ukranian and Polish) with developer and user manuals (the latter in all the languages of the project). * Identification of best practices and improvement areas on Inclusive Culture in formal, non-formal e informal education as well as a report on methodologies, procedures and resources in cultural-adult education cooperation, with experts from all the participating countries. * Development and test of a Design Thinking process for accessible products in inclusive culture. All the outputs have been compiled in a book with five editions (Galician, Spanish, Portuguese, Icelandic and Polish) all of them bilingual in English and following accessibility guidelines for texts. All outputs and information is available at the project website: https://allureculture.eu Also, a chapter in Athena Research book (Open Access): A Design Thinking Based Proposal for Self-guided Adaptative Visits to Cultural Facilities González-González, J. et al. https://press.um.si/index.php/ump/catalog/book/812 . The project and its results were also presented in various professional meetings, congresses, etc.
Our project offers guidelines and resources to be implemented by the educational teams of different cultural institutions and organizations so that the maximum benefit is achieved from its potential as a source of non-formal education for adults. In addition, it offers attention to the potential public at risk of cultural exclusion (people with disabilities, migrant groups, inhabitants of rural environments, etc.). Our goal has been to achieve an active, well-informed and competent citizenry, capable of following the advances of society without leaving anyone behind. The team worked together to ensure the inclusive participation of groups at risk of cultural exclusion using technological and online accessibility resources. All this with the integration of the joint and collaborative work of various European adult education centers (formal and non-formal), always with an eye toward inclusion and full social participation. The aim was also to give a voice throughout all phases of the process (design, implementation, evaluation...) to relevant groups of users through associations, supporters and activists in favor of people at risk.
In the countries participating in the project, a significant cultural gap was detected at the time amongst the adult population that affects access to both museum centers and cultural resources made available to citizens in general. However, existing cultural resources constitute a good learning basis for globalized education, all formal, non-formal and informal. To make this potential effective, they need to change focus and to work on a new methodological and technological approach that allows them to be accessible and suitable for everyone. All this should be based on a universal learning design approach, where the focus is on reaching all citizens without any discrimination or bias. In summary, the needs addressed were: • universal accessibility of the contents of cultural institutions as training resources • methodology of inclusive non-formal educational interventions in cultural institutions • technological resources to support cultural inclusion as well as a training tool • effective collaboration between formal and non-formal learning in adult education • social and citizen inclusion through cultural resources