Intercultural dialogue: a holistic approach to teaching drama, storytelling and video making techniques
This is an 18 months Erasmus+ adult strategic partnership project (2018-2020) created by five partners from the UK, Italy, France, Estonia and Greece. The coordinator of the project is the Sirius Training CIC from the UK.
Educators who work in adult education - teachers, tutors, mentors and social workers involved in lifelong learning in partners' institutions - will be the main target group. The final beneficiaries are adult learners, including people with fewer opportunities.
The objectives of the project are:
*to share best practices among project partners,
*to increase professional development of adult educators,
*to collect and develop methods of intercultural dialogue,
*to develop and reinforce EU networks for teaching and learning,
*to enrich partnership of adult education providers in partners' countries and Europe,
*to support social and educational value of European cultural heritage.
Partners in the consortium are a Community Interest Company, a local public body and non-governmental organisations. Partners are located in different geographical regions in Europe and they all work with adult learners, including people with fewer opportunities.
This project focuses on intercultural dialogue, and because of that partners will involve participants from different cultural and social backgrounds: ethnic and national minorities, migrants and refugees and representatives of different religions, all with the aim to share European diversity, common European values and to build intercultural dialogue. Universal language of art and video will be the base to start communication and partnership.
There will be staff members and educators from partners' organisations involved in transnational project meetings and short-term joint staff training events. The participants in local activities will be staff members, educators and adult learners. Local stakeholders, including the media, will be involved in dissemination activities. More than 200 people will be directly involved in this project and more than 1000 indirectly during dissemination activities (web-surfers engaged in social networks, the reading/watching of partners' websites and social media).
There will be three transnational project meetings during the project: in France, Estonia and Italy. This will include sharing the best practice of adult teaching and two short-term joint staff trainings in the UK and Greece, with a focus on learning storytelling, drama and video making techniques. Partners will collect and develop methodology for teaching adult learners. They will organise workshops and training sessions in their own countries to apply and test the methodology collected and produced within the partnership.
Partners plan to explore new practices for teaching adult learners using storytelling and drama methods, making videos of this process at the same time and then using these videos to create and present new stories and dramas. Experimental learning inside triangles - storytelling-drama-video, video-drama-storytelling - will give a holistic approach of the educational process and bring new synergy of methods.
Multilingualism will be one of the main approaches. Partners will use the diversity of languages and cultures in the project activities to help them develop stories, drama and videos with the aim to build intercultural dialogue.
The intangible results of this project are:
- acquisition of new competences and ICT skills for educators in the partners' organisations;
- exchange of didactic experience among staff at international level;
- enhanced intercultural competences for the staff and learners;
- development of a lifelong learning network of partners and other stakeholders involved at the local, national and EU level;
- increased EU project management competences.
The tangible results are:
- E-Handbook with methodological and pedagogical materials for educators;
- video about the trainings;
- digital stories made by adult learners collected by each partner;
- promotional materials (project logo, leaflet, press releases, information for social media, project Facebook page, etc).
Project learning materials will be available in digital form for a wide audience to use and it will make project results sustainable. Impact on the target groups will be seen on new competences, which they will gain after the implemented project activities. Participants will get inspiration for new learning methods and increased experience in working in an intercultural and multi-linguistic environment
Partner organisations will have opportunities for capacity building and networking, which will be one of the long-term benefits of this project. The project will add a strong European dimension to the local work with adult learners. Working together beyond national borders will help to encourage people and institutions with different backgrounds to be part of Erasmus+ Programme.
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This project has been funded with support from the European Commission. This publication reflects the views only of the author, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.
