DIVOC deals with the redescovery of the ancient pilgrims’ routes that cross Europe as a means to integrate arts in an European dimension and give teachers and students innovative and creative strategies to meet the needs of their communities. It will focus on three routes (via Francigena and two Saint James routes – the Portuguese and Via de la Plata ones) and, while walking, participants will gain knowledge of the historic monuments and the natural environment around them. The project involves 4 schools , two Italian schools (one is a newcomer) a Spanish and a Portuguese one. 80 students aged from 13 to 16 years old (12 will be disadvantaged ones) and 48 teachers will be involved in the mobilities, but bigger numbers of students and teachers will take part into the virtual mobilities and phisically to their local ones. Walking on pilgrims’routes is a very strong and spiritual experience with social effects because it generates fruitful interactions among the participants. It will be challenging for our students, that are used to virtual interactions, to adapt themselves to different cultures and contexts. Moreover the pillgrimage will lead them to introspection, meditation, self-analysis and will broaden their minds. Walking together will help youngsters overcome personal limits, become aware of the impact of anthropization on the environment and inspire them to care and respect their history. In fact, the project aims at offering students a new outlook on art and recognize it as part of the environment. Creativity will be stimulated in every step of the project through active laboratories where the students will express themselves through various artistic forms (manual and digital) using the L2. So, they will gain digital and linguistict competences while reinforcing their European identity. The inclusive strategies adopted (peer to peer, cooperative learning, problem solving) during the workshop will give teachers the chance to share good practices. The project also aims at promoting the territories explored on a tourist and and economic level and, through its activities, it will give our students the chance to gain the competences needed to work in the field of sustainable tourism. The concrete results will be travel journals to be planned before the mobilities and produced during the mobility workshops. Another product will be a repository of the documents gathered in libraries and archives that can be used in the future by partecipants when needed for study or work. The project will also be a significant experience in a world that takes advantage of people’s fear for diversity and strangers for political purposes. Pilgrimage indeed are peaceful crossings of people from different countries who walk together and support each other. DIVOC will provide students with a chance to reflect and learn how to manage personal relationships, be tolerant and fight against the fear of diversity. Finally, it will be the means for our adolescents to better know themeselves and their peers in a critical moment like the one we are living today due to the pandemic crisis and its confinement consequences.
The pilgrimage on foot is a form of experience with strong social implications: it generates fruitful interactions between the people who participate and it could be a challenge to test the ability to adapt to different situations and cultures, it fosters safe and sustainable movement. The journeys have been moments of reflection, introspection, meditation, self-analysis as well as an opportunity to learn how to overcome one's limits supported by a group. In the spirit of respecting the objectives of the 2030 Agenda through different landscapes, another goal was to educate the participants to take care, know and respect their own territory by exploring different natural or man-made landscapes, to gain awareness of the impact that human behaviors can have on the environment. At the same time, the project has also stressed the tourist and economic possibilities offered by this type of tourism (pilgrimage) creating a journey diary using with the digital technologies. Furthermore, the project has been an opportunity to integrate the European dimension into art and provide teachers with innovative and creative tools to respond to the needs of their communities.
The project involved 4 schools, two Italian (one was a newcomer) one Spanish and one Portuguese who joined in the project because they shared similar needs and the desire to provide different learning and teaching environments for students and teachers. After two years of pandemic, organized outdoor activities to encourage socialization, develop creativity, multiple intelligences and open up new horizons. So, students have had the possibility to know other cultures and traditions and live the experience of an active European citizenship, based on respect, understanding and cooperation. The two Italian schools are located in the same disadvantaged context characterized by poverty, subculture and complex family relationship and they both act as center of aggregation and socialization and invest in new teaching methods to motivate students at risk of drop out and to facilitate inclusion. The Spanish school, specialized in distance learning after the Covid health crisis, has found that this teaching methodology, which is effective with adults, is less so with young people. The Portuguese school, located in a rural environment and attended by several students with special needs, was also looking for ideas for new learning and teaching environments to offer its students an educational proposal aimed at developing creativity and imagination. All in all, the goals we wanted to achieve were: access to culture and knowledge for disadvantaged pupils, development of civic responsability, awareness and respect for the environment and the local areas, creativity, exchange of good practices in terms of innovative learning environments, strengthening of foreign languages.