Building trust, including people and exploring challenges within societies by and trough Art & Culture. Sometimes, people underestimate the power of Art & Culture in the everyday life and how they could be used to facilitate the social and labour integration of excluded people.
Art & Culture can transform people’s lives, they offer opportunities in building stronger ties between groups and individuals. Use of cultural and artistic creative processes as a tool for social and labour inclusion is more than relevant specially in those days marked by COVID-19 and its consequences on health, social and economic life.
Art & Culture for many years has been a strong link for a well-functioning democracy. Of the values nurtured by Art & Culture over the centuries, some of the most important to be noted are that societies tend to be more tolerant, well-functioning, open-minded and successful where individuals have the possibility to engage and participate in a range of cultural activities.
CULTUR’ACT project aims to empower vulnerable adults and youngsters (trainees in formal, informal & non formal settings including women and migrants) using Art & Culture activities/processes. The project will combine three main areas, namely:
Social theory is related to trust, social ties, shared norms and relationships among people and communities.
Global competence linked to skills, values, and behaviours that prepare people to thrive in a more diverse, interconnected world based on 4 main domains: Investigate the world, Recognize perspectives, Communicate ideas and Take actions.
Art & Culture will be the mean to be used.
Therefore, the project intend to create bounds between social capital and trainees’ global competence while equipping trainers/facilitators with material to work with trainees in formal, informal and non-formal training settings, using Art & Culture techniques and processes.
To do so, from April 2021 until March 2023, 7 partners from 6 European countries (BE, CY, EL, FR, IT, XK) will:
– EXCHANGE and TRANSFER experiences and good practice among trainers, adult and their communities;
– DEVELOP a methodology guide and resources for trainers to empower vulnerable adults and youngster using Art & Culture processes;
– EMPOWER vulnerable adults and youngsters;
– IMPLEMENT local pilot projects with participants (both users and beneficiaries);
– ENGAGE associated partners, key-stakeholders in training and cultural sectors and carry out dissemination and exploitation actions.
The project will end with 6 shows organized at national/European level demonstrating the learning carried out by the project target group.
Objectives
CULTUR’ACT project is shaped with the goal to foster global competence for advancing social inclusion and career path of vulnerable people using Art & Culture. Through a bespoke coaching and training programme, CULTUR’ACT will also equip the professionals (Trainers & Facilitators) with a toolkit so they can better support these target groups to use global competence to cope with challenges they face every day.
CULTUR’ACT will adopt a bottom-up approach and will involve both target groups (i.e. users and final beneficiaries) in all key phases of the project, including development, design, testing, validation, mainstream and dissemination.
EUROPEAN AGENDA
Our project will contribute to the following areas within:
A) the New European Agenda for Culture – COM (2018) 267 – which acknowledge the social and political challenges Europe faces today and aims at contributing towards European cohesion and integration through culture. The first objective of the Agenda is harnessing the power of culture for social cohesion and wellbeing.
B) the renewed European Agenda for Adult Learning under the four strategic objectives identified by the Council in the ET2020:
– enhance the possibilities for adults, regardless of gender to access high-quality learning opportunities at any time in their lives, in order to promote personal and professional development, empowerment, adaptability, employability and active participation in society;
– develop a new approach to adult education and training which focuses on learning outcomes and learner responsibility and autonomy;
– foster greater awareness among adults that learning is a lifelong endeavour which they should pursue at regular intervals during their lives, and particularly during periods of unemployment or career transition;
– encourage the development of effective lifelong guidance systems.
C) the European Integration Network recommendations from the last meeting held in Vienna in November 2018:
– it is important to involve vulnerable people with a migrant background in designing strategies and programmes for integration and to base those instruments on their needs;
– it is crucial to actively reach out to women. Engaging at an early stage pays off;
– positive measures are needed to promote gender equality.
GLOBAL AGENDA
We also believe that our project will go some way to contribute to the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development Goal 4 “quality education” and Goal 5 “gender equality and empower all women”, including:
– 4.4 Relevant skills for decent work;
– 4.5 Gender equality and equal access to all levels of education;
– 5.1 End all forms of discrimination against all women;
– 5.5 Ensure women’s full and effective participation and equal opportunities for leadership at all levels.
ERASMUS+ PRIORITIES
a) Supporting the setting up of, and access to, upskilling pathways by making available skills identification and screening, learning offers adapted to individual learning needs, recognition of flexible modes of learning.
CULTUR’ACT will develop a bespoke e-Learning platform on global competence using Art & Culture for vulnerable target groups supporting them in terms of their social inclusion and career path, a flexible micro-learning path on global competence for both target groups, beneficiaries and users.
b) CULTUR’ACT will elaborate a bespoke coaching/training to equip professionals in providing coaching support to vulnerable people in advancing their social inclusion and career path, by enhancing global competence using Art & Culture to cope with challenges they face every day. The programme will include a coaching scheme, a step-by-step guidance and recommendations, and a toolkit to support the coaching/training cycles. This coaching programme can be used across countries, regardless of age, background, ethnicity.
c) CULTUR’ACT will address global competence, including diversity, multiculturalism, migration, participation and world-education, and promote through innovative and integrated approaches of equality, including gender equality, and non-discrimination and social inclusion, through education. CULTUR’ACT will also support and assess new approaches to reducing disparities in access to and engagement with digital technologies in non-formal education, addressing gender differences (through artistic and cultural processes and activities).
Outputs
CULTUR’ACT project partners target to develop 4 main supporting material:
IO1: CULTUR’ACT Methodology Handbook
A pedagogical resources framework including handbook guide, training methods, basic concepts, tips and exploitation guidelines about “training and inclusion through art & culture processes” addressed to trainers and educators. It will be a step-by-step handbook guide to promote inclusion, using Art & Culture, and to improve awareness about their usefulness: trainers will start from the personal life of trainees and going to their social and professional life. The main objective is to provide practical tools to design and implement efficient training sessions.
IO2: CULTUR’ACT Training Kit
Composed by a learning outcomes matrix, a set of practical activities based on the common training methods with innovative practical tools to support learners in their artistic & cultural activities (video, photography, theatre, broadcasting…). It will be designed for learners to express themselves (digital storytelling, video documentary, Photo exhibition…) and to develop their global competence (Investigate the world, Recognise opportunities, Communicate ideas, Take action) aiming their social and labour inclusion.
Partners will produce a competences framework, a toolkit and resources to assist learners in the process of reinforcement of their global competence, social capital and inclusion.
The training kit could be used also by teachers/trainers in their practice, learning environments, teaching and learning process to implement. These will include pedagogical methods, approaches and materials.
IO3: CULTUR’ACT Shows
A pedagogical resources framework including handbook guide, training methods, basic concepts, tips and exploitation guidelines about “training and inclusion through art & culture processes” addressed to trainers and educators. It will be a step-by-step handbook guide to promote inclusion, using Art & Culture, and to improve awareness about their usefulness: trainers will start from the personal life of trainees and going to their social and professional life. The main objective is to provide practical tools to design and implement efficient training sessions.
IO4: CULTUR’ACT Educational Digital Hub
An e-learning platform for open access to be used by teachers/trainers as well as learners, which will have 2 thematic objectives:
1) understanding dynamic of using Art & Culture in training and inclusion processes;
2) acting to implement training session combining global competence, social capital and art & culture techniques to raise awareness and develop knowledge on different elements related with integration through art and culture general.
The platform will help to accomplish the project following main objectives:
-Open Education Resources repository, offering an online space to launch the OER outputs developed within the project, in an easily and free-access way;
-promotional media, to disseminate the project, its activities and outputs, in order to ensure maximum outreach, longer impact and sustainability;
-networking tool, shared by participants, stakeholders and other relevant and/or interested organizations, aimed at multiplying the effect of dissemination and exploitation;
-dissemination hub notably source of relevant information, contents, resources, methodologies…