CiSU – Culture is YOU
Art and culture are central factors of socialisation, instruments of access to the world and the basis for the development of key competences. Cultural education promotes tolerance and widens the view of the world. The migration crisis, advancing digitalisation and the COVID19 pandemic are causing much uncertainty. The challenges of our time can only be solved together.
Especially the group of young adults with disabilities have difficulties when it comes to European culture and understanding that everyone is an important part of Europe. They see culture as something abstract and elitist that does not touch their own reality of life. Therefore, the CisU project provides awareness raising and cultural education for a large target group. Providing basic cultural education for all people has a positive impact on society as a whole. People who are educated in this way are better integrated into society, become more self-confident and get better access to the labour market.
There are many projects and materials aimed at young people in relation to cultural education, but projects that focus on adult learners are an exception. Therefore, we concentrate on the following two target groups:
- On the one hand, the focus is on young adult learners who are affected by various constraints (long-term unemployed, people with a migration background, low-skilled adults, …).
- On the other hand, the focus is on the trainers who work with these learners; we provide them with a workshop concept as well as learning materials combined with exercises and activities that they can use directly in their trainings.
The overall aim of this project is to promote cultural awareness and understanding among adults with disabilities. We want to be part of improving access to culture for this group of people and integrating them better into society. For this reason, the following project results have been agreed with the organisations from Spain, the Czech Republic, Poland and Austria:
RESULT 1: DESIGN materials for cultural knowledge building
As for many young adults’ culture is a very abstract concept, we want to show them with learning materials and a board game that culture is not that difficult to understand. But in order to develop these materials, it is important to first think about their design. Therefore, a didactic concept and a curriculum for the learning materials and the game will be created as part of Outcome 1.
RESULT 2: LEARNING about culture
To give young adults a better understanding of culture, learning materials will be developed that include information on “What is culture” and “What are the domains of culture”, as well as interesting and entertaining examples of different areas of culture. To make learning more exciting, many videos and animations will be included. The materials will be available on an online learning platform.
RESULT 3: PLAY to experience culture
To understand European culture, it is important not only to learn it theoretically, but also to experience it. Therefore, a haptic board game is being developed that can be played by our target group, because learning through play is easy and fun for the learners. It will also have a positive impact on adult educators as they get an idea of how to teach culture in a playful way and they get a fun and creative tool to integrate into their courses.
RESULT 4: GUIDE to implementing Arts Education
A new workshop concept that can be used by many different educational institutions is being developed. It is being developed for a face-to-face course and one for an online course so that the concept can be used in many different settings. Trainers get inspired to include more cultural issues in their training as they receive many materials they can directly use. Young adult learners can develop their cultural awareness and competences as they receive very diverse tools that appeal to a wide range of learning types. They overcome the feeling that culture is something abstract and boring and there will be more people participating in cultural events and be better included into the society.
