Our project INSPIRE is a result of the mutual work of five participating schools from Greece (the coordinating institution), Bulgaria, Italy, Portugal and Turkey.
INSPIRE is the acronym of our project and stands for Innovate Sustain Preserve Intangible Roots in Europe. Our team of 5 schools strongly believes we can do a lot to promote our local tangible and intangible cultural heritage and pass it on to future generations. How? We need to collect all we have ( music/ folklore, dances, performing arts, clothing, language and oral traditions, artwork, traditional craftsmanship, social practices, festivities, cultural spaces, landscapes, flora and fauna, gastronomy, knowledge and skills transmitted from generation to generation within a community) and with all the
materials and information collected, create a digital school library- a DIGITAL HERITAGE BOX - and consequently enrich our school, municipality and national network libraries.
Students will be encouraged to collect testimonies, make interviews among the educational and local community about past habits, social practices, oral tradition - individual, collective stories and legends, recipes, just to name some, making use of the modern technologies and ICT tools and resources to register and store information gathered. All the results and materials of their research ( photos, videos, texts, scrolls,...) will be scanned to make them available for future generations
. Together we could be learning with each other, sharing common values and offer a unique experience to our students coming from different study areas like computer, tourism, hotel and catering management, and general areas like arts, humanities, science and technology and enable them with the 21st century skills. Having the following goals in mind:
• to develop awareness for foreign cultures• to preserve, transmit and divulge our local and regional cultural heritage
• to find out and share common values and cultural aspects
• to internationalise our schools and cities and promote our towns and regions
• to value and promote our past (cultural heritage) and pass it on for the next generations
• to promote cultural diversity, intercultural dialogue and social cohesion
• to create responsible and engaged citizens/ cultural enterpreneurs in building the future of Europe
• to see sights and get to know culture and heritage of a foreign country• to meet friends in foreign countries (with different cultures)
we decided to meet and share, to meet and work together, to meet and spread the world that we would like to INSPIRE them to love Europe and the European civilisation.
Partner schools
The coordinating organisation:
Geniko Lykeio Arfaron, Arfara Greece
The school is a state senior high of general education for students of 15-18 years old. It has got 65 students (10% migrants). In A class they attend a general education curriculum and in B class they select either a humanitarian or a scientific course with general education. In C Class they attend
general education subjects and humanitarian or financial-ICT or scientific courses.It has got an ICT, Physics-Chemistry lab, a library, an open basketball/volleyball court and a football field. 10 teachers encourage students to participate in extracurricular activities (competitions-EUROSCOLA,sport events -National School Championship, projects-Erasmus+/KA2, eTwinning, environmental, cultural projects and visits to archeological sites). All of these have positive impact on their intercultural
awareness, personal development, creative-critical thinking, problem solving. This way they become active citizens and develop positive attitude towards diversity. Some of the students come from Arfara, a semi-urban town and others from 13 nearby small villages. The students have limited horizons of the European dimension-opportunities.Their parents are engaged in agriculture or commerce (middle or lower class) with different cultural-financial backgrounds. The teachers strive to provide to them the most up-to-date education which prepares them for the new European and globalised reality. They are interested in other countries' cultures and they feel happy to host guests from abroad.
Partner organisations:
Agrupamento de Escolas Marcelino Mesquita do Cartaxo , Portugal
It´s a cluster of schools, ranging from pre-school and kindergarten, Primary school to middle school and junior / senior high school with a total number of 2105 students aged between 3 and 20 years oldand integrated in 100 different classes. The school employs 200 teachers and it offers regular courses involving study areas, like science and technology, economy, arts and humanities and also vocational and specialized courses in the areas of Trade and Commerce, Management, wine production, Computer Science, Sports, Lab, hotel industry, catering, bar service and cookery. There is a department for students with special needs and we are a reference and successful school in guiding and integrating autistic pupils. The focus of learning is on a variety of extra activities based on a number of projects and real life experiences that prepare students for their future careers, therefore a variety of school clubs and projects are carried out at school to provide students with the possibility of developing their learning and life skills: sports, theater and visual arts, pottery, philosophy, languages, experimental science and lab, crafts, choir, ICT, computer programming and languages in an early age, entrepeneurship for younger children (Empcriança) and other projects.
We also carry out a number of volunteering projects, fund- raising initiatives and campaigns and community work. We have actively taken part in national and international contests such as biology, philosophy, math and science Olympics and we have won many important awards. We have talentedstudents for art and performing arts, music, dance, and every year we organize the successful fund raising contest "School got Talent". We did several international projects and training with Sweden,Greece, Finland, Italy, Norway, Netherlands, Malta and Ireland. We also carry on the Youth Parliament, etwinning, Elos-Education Stretching Borders, and our school is also Ambassador for the European Parliament, Ambassador School Programme and a Duke of Edinburgh's Award, School.
We have students who come from various cultural and economic backgrounds, from urban and rural areas but most of all with great skills, dreams, ambitions and aspirations. Our school is located in an area of a rich intangible cultural heritage that runs the risk of vanishing if we don´t value and promote it making it known in and out of the region. Our library is being modernized to cope in a digital area and one of our goals is to create a digital database with all we collect and outcomes from the project we´d like to be carrying on.
Professional High School of Tourism "Asen Zlatarov", Plovdiv, Bulgaria
Professional High School of Tourism is a developing institution and is a leader school in Plovdiv and the country. All professions correspond to the dynamic growth of tourism in Bulgaria. Our school has rich history and combines many traditions with innovation for engaging the full potential of all direct and indirect participants in the learning process. 61 motivated teachers constantly promote its image of a modern educational institution. There are 756 students from Plovdiv and the region. The practice of our students is carried out in hotels, restaurants, pastry shops in Bulgaria and abroad. 2/3 of our students study intensive English or German. More than 2 decades our students practise their professional knowledge on a summer practice in Germany. The internship allows trainees to improve both professional and language knowledge and skills. We have experience in many international projects and trainings: TCA in Slovakia, Pestalozzi ProgramSeminar in Norway, 2015/2016 - Erasmus +, KA1 - staff mobility in Portugal, ELTP 2013 and PTP 2014 in NYC, The USA, 2014- Comenius-individual mobility in Prague, 2011- Leonardo da Vinci Program, 2009/2012 - Comenius -3 Multilateral Partnerships, 2009/10 2 ESFALP projects. During the last 10 years 156 students and teachers took part in more than 20 meetings on various project topics in 15 countries.On the regional competitions of Euroscola program our school teams won quota in 2013 & 2017. Our school is vocational and provides excellent and modern education with support to each student and his aspiration to creative and personal development. It is our responsibility all students to succeed and achieve their potential. Our motivation to join the project is to imrprove our students' awareness of the European cultural heritage and the importance of education in diverse democratic societies by offering them opportunities for international exchange. Our experience relevant to the proeject is that we: provide education in the spphere of tourism; prepare students for the information society by achieving ICT literacy' at school; have started a system for career development; reduce the share ESL; intergrate students from ethnic minorities; form attitude for LLL from an early age; provide Quality Education - key knowledge, skills and competence. Upgrade facilities -is linked with the management of delegated budgets, participation in projects gives us an opportunity to improve the school facilities.
Istituto Tecnico Statale CARLO CATTANEO, San Miniato, Italy
Istituto Tecnico "Carlo Cattaneo" (since 1963) is a technical secondary school located in San Miniato (Tuscany). It has about 870 students aged 14-19, 109 teachers,26 technical assistants
secretaries and caretakers.Students attend our school for five years.We participate in a project called Avanguardie Educative: a Cultural Movement for the Educational and Organizational
Transformation of the Italian School,which promotes innovative teaching and learning methodologies such as Flipped Classroom, Debate and cooperative learning.We offer 4 courses:the Administration,Finance-Marketing, the International Relations for Marketingthe Tourism and the Chemistry-Materials course. Our school is located in an industrial area famous for its tanneries and factories producing leather goods,so a lot of people from abroad and other Italian regions come here to look for a job.Our school provides various activities in collaboration with the Local Authorities (The Town Hall, he Museum System, Sanminiatopromozione, La Cooperativa La Pietra d' Angolo)to help them to integrate in the school and the local area.Students, parents, teachers, and our Headmaster are very motivated to participate in the Erasmus Plus Project K2. We participated in two Multilateral Comenius projects: "A Trip across Europe-Entrepreneurship and Tourism "(2011-2013)and in a Comenius project "Citizens of Europe:Past, Present and Future" 2013-2015 and now we participating in 2 Erasmus plus projects ("Young Tourism:Listen and Discover"-2017-2019/"Better together:Opening Young Minds To The Positive Re-Branding Of Age" 2018-2220.We have had and cultural exchanges with foreign countries.We have been participating in many eTwinning Projects: "A Trip across Europe-Entrepreneurship and Tourism " (2011-2013)/"Let's Exchange emails"!.( 2016- 2017)/"Beyond European Borders"(2017-2018)/"United in Diversity" (2017-2018)/"Italy-The Netherlands: History,Art, and Cultural Heritage"(2016-2019)/Young Tourism:Listen and Discover"(2017-2019).Now we are participating in "Welcome to My Country"(2018-2019)/ "Thornhill College throw of the DICE into Europe! "(2018-2019) and "Scanning the continents for V.I.P.s - a journey into greatness"(2018-2019).
Corlu IMKB Fen Lisesi, Tekirdağ, Turkey
The school is an education complex(a main school building and a dormitory). It has got 520 studentsand 40 teachers, a library, a health room, a conference hall and 3 well-equipped Science labs.It is one of the most distinguished schools in the region which focuses on Science education and aims at laying the base for scientific thinking and introducing open-minded students interested in sciencetechnology, research and innovative works.It has been participating in academic competitions and Science Olympics continously.Organized the TUBITAK Science Fair within the premises in May, 2015-2017.Our school sends its students abroad in order to trigger their ambition about language learning.Currently,it's been in an e-Twinning project and it has been granted by Erasmus funds(two KA1and two KA229 project). Since our society will pass on all the culturalbackground and universal values to new generations, students and teachers have to develop themselves culturally and technologically in order to adopt the contemporary(21st century) human model. Therefore,our teachers and students are always ready to take part in any project and they aim at keeping up with the times.We believe that as teachers we should not only teach our students school subjects,but also our culture and cultural values.We wish our students to be able to deal with global issues from different perspectives.We believe that having such extra curricular activities and projects on our students' CVs will definitely be beneficial for them. That's why our school participated e-twinning project "Çemberimde Gül Oya" in which teachers aimed to make their students be aware of the cultural richness of our country through exibitions to local people of cultural objects of different regions and cities of Turkey together.The exhibitions took attention all over Turkey.