Our story
March 2020. The region of Lombardia was severely hit by covid, schools shut down with no ending in sight, streets were empty, fear of catching the new deadly disease was everywhere. Everyday life as we knew it, suddenly turned upside down. In the middle of curfews and travel bans, teachers of the art school Liceo Mengaroni in Pesaro turned the complete standstill of everyday life into an opportunity to come up with a new Erasmus+ project, in which art and inclusivity, two strong leading points of the school, would contribute to move forward the promotion of art, accessible to a large public in their local communities.
What better way than to have students create inclusivity tools to increase the accessibility of local cultural heritage, while getting input from the north (Belgium), the west (Portugal) and the east (Bulgaria)? Thus, in the middle of desperate times, the precious project Art for All was born.
The programme was submitted, eager partners were found and the first meetings were held online. In september 2021, the short term joint staff's meeting in Pesaro was just what the doctor ordered to fight the post pandemic blues. Reenergized by all the ideas, all participacipating countries got to work.
Art for All, a KA229 project, is part of the Erasmus+ programme, 2021-2023.
four schools, four countries - one goal
Team Italy - Liceo Artistico Mengaroni, Pesaro
Liceo Artistico Mengaroni is a Secondary Art School located in the city of Pesaro, in central Italy on the Adriatic coast. Our school combines the appreciation and preservation of local artistic traditions and cultural heritage with attention to new trends and contemporary languages in the artistic field. Our Art departments encompass Graphic Design, Fashion Design, Architecture, Audiovisual and Multimedia, Interior Design and Figurative Arts.
General subjects include Literature, Philosophy, History, History of Art, Geography, Maths and Science, English and PE. The course of study lasts five years and is divided into two cycles of two years each and a fifth final year. After the final year’s State Examination students have access to higher education (Universities, Art Academies, etc.) and/or job opportunities.
The school is well integrated in the local artistic, social and economic context, and thanks to these well-built relationships the city of Pesaro, the Marches Region and the surrounding areas offer our students different forms of employment and training opportunities in the artistic field.
Inclusion has always been a primary goal within our Institution.
Our school has also a long experience in the implementation of awareness and promotion campaigns and each department of our school is constantly engaged, in collaboration with local institutions, associations and firms, in the creation and organization of communication campaigns, fairs, festivals, exhibitions, performances, fashion shows, artistic performances and products for the urban environment.
Team Portugal - Agrupamento d’escolas Rafael Bordalo Pinheiro, Caldas Da Rainha
The institution, Agrupamento de Escolas Rafael Bordalo Pinheiro, is situated in a small town, about 80 km north from the capital (Lisbon). The school is composed with 15 schools with a total of 1568 students distributed by the different levels of education (kindergarten to secondary level) and 186 teachers .
In the secondary school (from 10th to the 12th grade) the school offers regular courses (arts, economics, languages and sciences) and professional courses (tourism, audiovisual, media, mechanical, etc.). Always bearing in mind global changes in education, the school diversified its offer. Students can either be prepared for the university or attend vocational courses. Concerning vocational courses, there are audio-visual and many different areas such as serigraphymetal work, electricity, theatre and music. Regarding international projects (Sócrates/ Comenius), the school has a long experience. Teachers and students have been sharing and exchanging their work in many European countries and the arts have always been one of the priorities.
Caldas da Rainha is a medium-sized city in western central Portugal in the historical province of Estremadura and the district of Leiria. The municipality has a population of 51,729 in an area of 255.69 square kilometres, with 27,378 residing in the city. Althoughhe city itself lies about 10.5 kilometres inland, three of the municipality's civil parishes lie on the Atlantic Ocean. Caldas da Rainha is best known for its sulphurous hot springs and ceramic pottery. The settlement was founded in the 15th century by Queen Leonor (Rainha Dona Leonor), who established a hospital and a church at the site of some therapeutic hot springs.
Regarding international projects (Sócrates/ Comenius), the school has a long experience for the last 21 years. Teachers and students have been sharing and exchanging their work in many European countries and the arts have always been one of the priorities. In school's facilities, there is an exhibition of works of art made since the foundation of the school. All those projects, besides from promoting the contact among the European countries, aim at offering to teachers a deep knowledge of the different education systems, developing a cooperation in order to exchange learning methods and stimulating the open mildness to new cultures, taking into account the exchange of teaching and learning methods, materials and curricula.
In our school we have projects Erasmus, Comenius or Leonardo for about 21 years. We have a general coordinator of the projects, Mr. Luis Militão Gomes, who has been involved in this for twenty years and a team of 12 teachers. The working group at our school consists of 12 teachers from the arts, English, French, Portuguese, history, Informatics and physical education.
They work in weekly thematic workshops with 60 students.These worshops (4) are: arts and history ;languages and culture; science and health and multimedia. We have a general coordinator, Mr Luis Militão Gomes who organizes the work monthly with the teacher responsible for each workshop and manages financially the project funds with the director.
We are partners in two projects and annually we apply for new projects because we believe that it is very important for teachers and students to come into contact with new realities. Our principal believes that such projects are very important for students to acquire new skills such as communication, etc.
Team Bulgaria - 134 SU "Dimcho Debeljanov”, Sofia
134 Secondary School ”Dimcho Debelyanov” in Sofia with Hebrew and English Studies is a successor of Hristo Botev First High School. During the First World War, the building was used as a military hospital and students were trained in private accommodation. The school works in partnership with the “Ronald S. Lauder Foundation”, the Bulgarian ORT Foundation and the “America for Bulgaria Foundation”. It builds a Center for Excellence in Education. At higher level /from 8th to 12th grade/ we have 3 profiles: "Foreign Languages", "Software and Hardware Sciences" and the all-new "Science" profile for the school. All our students at higher level study English as a foreign language. In our work we try to prepare students for the challenges of their future life. Current situations are very challenging for young people and education as they have to be ready to appear on a job market, look for a job, sometimes migrate, get used to new situations, cope with unemployment, economic and financial crisis in their countries and Europe. Schools and teachers have to give them “necessary tools” to be able to exist in the contemporary world.
Our main objective with this students’ mobility project is to improve their integrative education and expand the students' horizons and culturally enrich the entire educational community. In addition, we also want to promote values of tolerance to diversity, communication and collaboration between European citizens with the aim of having a broader and more accurate view of Europe. We also think that this project will allow our students to achieve the appropriate competences that will pave the way to adapting to a future job or to higher education with a more open approach to Europe. Finally, we think it is very important for our students to improve their linguistic competence in the languages spoken.
The team of the project was selected in November according to the following criteria: managerial competences, language level, motivation. Tsvetanka Vladimirova was a manager of the projects “Four Seasons, Four Elements” and “Environment Reflects Culture”. She is a very competent and implicated English teacher who succeeds in developing good relationships with her students. She is always concerned with improving her professional skills, as well as her human interrelations abilities. Kiril Nikolov is Art teacher. He is very competent and implicated teacher. Aneliya Atanasova is an important member of the project due to her ICT skills.
Team Belgium
Atheneum Athena Ostend is a secondary school in general education, spread over three different campuses in Ostend. Students are following general education in different streams from 12 till 18 years old: sciences, maths, languages, modern languages and Latin; economics, sports and humanities. In recent years we introduced a new study stream: STEM and since 10 years the school offers different courses in CLIL-version. We have about 1.450 students and staff counts about 130 teachers and administrative crew.
Our motivation to join this project is mainly bridging the gap between youth and participation in cultural projects, especially for students with lesser favourable social backgrounds. Because of austerity politics in general participation in arts has become more and more an extra-luxurious activity.
The school has a task force of about 12 teachers participating and coaching students into Erasmus+ projects.
We already had three different Erasmus+ projects (KA229) on the domain of cultural identity and diversity, arts, ,,jumelage’’ bonds or city links and the revalorization of cultural heritage in recent years. Locally we have good cooperations and relationships with different musea, art workshop and theatres.
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