• Our Erasmus+ project is entitled “Researching European And Cultural Heritage to share”. The partnership aims at transmitting local cultural natural heritage to European students, at encouraging its local exploration and at studying the processing chain of heritage (exploration, identification, protection, conservation, presentation and transmission to future generations). We are all eager and have high expectations as this innovative project will promote, for the first time in each school, physical and intellectual access to existing local UNESCO heritage sites leading to collaborative researches. • The coordinating school, “Lycée professionnel Buisson”, is located in France (Ermont). The other participating schools are located in Portugal (Rio Maior), Greece (Gerakas Pallinis), Romania (Focsani), Spain (Figueres) and Turkey (Adana). This two-year-long project will provide time to share and enrich from another’s cultural heritage, to interact and challenge assumptions, stereotypes on European countries. Participants (adults and students) will discover, share their own local heritage and learn about their European counterparts’ local heritage. • Education to heritage is essential to transmit it to future generations: students need to discover and understand what surrounds them to give meaning and importance to the richness of the existing heritage. Knowing their heritage and their cultural environment will help them get to know themselves better and will make them want to share these goods beyond their region. As heritage is an integral part of their identity, they will subsequently be led to discover the heritage of other cultures and to develop an increased awareness to multiculturalism. This theme is sufficiently attractive to develop their creativity and increase their responsiveness towards art, literature, respect for nature, music, etc. • Each partner will list and study any tangible and intangible heritage in its local environment. Students will collect documents, go out and meet cultural partners, visit places linked to local heritage. Work will focus on the European partners' artistic, cultural, natural, industrial and linguistic richness. Participants are also expected to identify types of heritage (national, European, world, architectural, natural, historical) so as to protect and preserve and share it. Our strategic partnership will enable participants (pupils and staff) to study and learn the inventoried local UNESCO’s tangible and intangible cultural heritage of Humanity. • Heritage can be a social-linking factor based on exchange but it can also be a tool for communication and image of a territory. It fosters and enhances our living environment's existing potential. It is rooted in the present and promotes cultural and touristic activities. Students will be able to interview officials in charge of local cultural events (heritage curator, event planner, different cultural professionals), to learn about heritage legislation on conservation or restoration, to meet different associations and know the agenda of cultural events. Identifying, meeting and exchanging with people who live and work in the heritage field helps young people to appreciate the importance of officials' role and commitment. In addition, this work will allow students to develop working techniques and research techniques on people and institutions related to the theme. It is interesting to make students work on the technique of interview and of the survey so that they have quality and first-hand information about the subject of their work.
• The coordinating school, “Lycée Professionnel Ferdinand BUISSON”, is located in France (Ermont). The other participating schools are located in Portugal (Rio Maior), Greece (Gerakas Pallinis), Romania (Focsani), Spain (Figueres) and Turkey (Adana). This initially two-year project, then prolonged by one year, has provided students and teachers time to enrich from their peers’ cultural heritage, to interact and to challenge stereotypes on European countries. • This Erasmus+ project also permitted us all to discover our respective local cultural and UNESCO heritage. We shared our explorative findings with our partners. • “Researching European And Cultural Heritage to share” encouraged collaboration thanks to asynchronic in-class activities on the eTwinning platform via our Twinspace and during LTTA workshops. • We had high expectations as this innovative project promoted, for the first time in each school, physical and intellectual access to existing local UNESCO heritage sites. The explorative process involved students and teachers who committed to discover, learn and understand their counterparts’ cultural heritage. Each realized that his/her cultural expectations about a partner’s culture were somehow biased; the partnership led each of us to exchange views, to confront clichés and to experience a sense of European unity. • Education to heritage is essential and this project proved fundamental at transmitting notions to our future generations. Each participating European student discovered, understood and shared the richness of his/her local existing UNESCO cultural heritage beyond his/her region. The thematic approach used in this project helped students to collect information, meet cultural partners and visit places linked to cultural and UNESCO heritage. The tangible and intangible outcomes delivered by each European partner were made possible thanks to the thematic approach: architecture, arts, history, nature, places of memory and UNESCO. • Our strategic partnership enabled students to develop social competences: students interviewed officials, passers-by about their local cultural heritage, met curators, attended national heritage-linked events (e.g. : the Pantheonisation of a French celebrity – Joséphine Baker). • Students learned and practiced twenty-first century skills and soft skills: intercultural awareness, foreign languages, teamwork and team learning. They became aware of the importance of heritage as a resource for promoting development. They understood the influence of heritage on our identity. They learned about the importance of intangible heritage and the history of their partners' countries, finding similarities and differences between them. They had the opportunity to demonstrate the main features of their own culture, and to appreciate that there are no major differences between pupils from different parts of Europe. • Relationships between all participants were strengthened by the memorable experiences of the activities, the encouragement to solve problems together, to learn from each other, and the exchange of best practice between teachers in activities with students.