Finds Stories is an interdisciplinary project that aims at utilising and interpreting European Cultural Heritage assets through new technologies with the view to promote second language acquisition and strengthen the social inclusion of minority groups. This project's priority is to record object biographies along with their tangible and intangible heritage significance in order to establish second language acquisition tools. The participation of young people from diverse socioeconomic backgrounds, cultures, religions, languages, mindsets, and perspectives will allow them to gain and enjoy social inclusion through innovative practices and universal digital approaches. For the achievement and the completion of this project's aims, several mediums will be utilised. The recording of Cultural Heritage objects with 3D methods, the production of the object biographies through creative arts, and the creation of lesson plans and educational resources. All these mediums will help educators to develop Cultural Heritage awareness and language competence. Finds Stories are delivered through a dual approach that leads through five phases of activities to the achievement of project objectives and results: A) a methodology to index and creatively investigate biographies of cultural heritage (CH) objects - finds - that can promote EU values of human dignity and rights, democracy and equality, and advocate the value of the free movement of people, ideas, and goods across the continent and B) a methodology that teaches second language through the Creative Object Biographies (COBs). Finds Stories aims to produce six different intellectual outputs, including an interactive resource, an open online course, a handbook, academic, and policy papers, along with an exhibition. These intellectual outputs are providing educators, researchers, academics, museum curators and visitors, multicultural classrooms students and the wider public with free, open access, tools that allow them to explore, understand and interpret the local European Cultural Heritage and its narratives and stories. Finds Stories aspires to offer resources that promote cultural awareness, equality, and acceptance, help participants to improve their research, and digital skills, and finally contribute to the development of active European citizens.
We aimed to created a methodology around object biographies, their creative interpretations, and how these can be part of a Heritage Education teaching schedule. We aimed to showcase that as objects move through time and scape create stories, they have non-human agencies, that influences and interacts with humans. Putting objects, and their creative interpretations in the centre of a learning projects, you create a medium that is equally abstract but tangible and the students can connect with them. Equally and through an object biography approach we aimed to explore further how modern day Europe have been shaped as outcome of large or smaller scale migratory events. Finally we could see the educational and interpretative value of creative arts for object based studies. Finally we wanted to achieve broad engagement from students and other professionals with the project, during the time period that the project was active.
As we move, and we are becoming mobile, whether to go to the market or to immigrate to a foreign country, we also move our bodies through space and time. During this movement, we interact with countless objects that have different values for us. These movements and interactions leave traces on the objects, but also on our bones, which we can explore through various scientific approaches. The Finds Stories project explores the marks that mobilities leave and tells the narratives of movement and the impact it has on societies and people, with the greater aim to foster language learning and social inclusion through these. We applied for Finds Stories so as to recorded these movements and use the movement narratives so as to alleviate the impact that it is created to both the groups that are moving but also to the societies that are experience the movement. By collecting and analysing biographical data, we uncover the diverse experiences of mobile groups and their material culture, shedding light on the diverse ways in which mobility shapes our world. Using creative arts, we enhancing these biographies and we create metanaratives that explore mobility's impact though a new research paradigm.