This project wanted to provide teachers and students with the necessary competences to discuss culturally sensitive issues in school and classrooms contexts, by developing and implementing Deep Democracy inspired and creative tools adapted to the age and living environment of students between 12 and 18 years old. With this project we addressed three important challenges in education: tackling social inequality, polarisation in the classroom; and overcoming reluctance and incompetence to navigate tensions and diverse voices.
The project aligned, at the time of submission, with the horizontal priorities of common values, civic engagement, and participation, as well as inclusion, diversity, and the development of key competences. It responded to a rapidly changing and increasingly polarised world, marked by a recent pandemic, debates on racism and decolonisation, technological change, and climate impacts. These tensions entered classrooms, where teachers often felt caught between diverse cultural and ideological frameworks and experienced pressure from students, parents, colleagues, and society. Many lacked tools to address friction in a super-diverse environment, resulting in unresolved tensions. The project aimed to strengthen secondary school teachers by teaching them Deep Democracy inspired and creative tools for dialogue and decision-making, and by developing meta-skills such as compassion, non-judgment, communication, and deep listening. Adapted from adult contexts, these methods were translated to classroom use, supported by artistic and creative approaches to foster homo empathicus, homo animoso, and homo ludens in young people.