Cultureunited

Culture United - Sparking Learning With Culture

Last year, the Culture United project was presented during the first Sharing Stories webinar of Cultural Heritage in Action. The webinar explored the relations between cultural heritage, education, training, and literacy. "How can local heritage promote new learning environments in education and help strengthen key competencies for young people?" "How can cities and regions support learning through, with and about cultural heritage?"

Culture United is a project funded by where project partners collaborate from Edinburgh Scotland, Dundalk Ireland, Leeuwarden Netherlands, and Oulu Finland. Culture United uses cultural events and heritage festivals to introduce multidisciplinary teaching methods in local primary schools. The activities proposed by the project appeal to the children’s interest and natural enthusiasm, using this energy and curiosity to engage them in learning and being inspired differently.

Learning Hub Friesland , Creative Spark , Kunstkade , The City of Edinburgh Council
, Kulttuuritalo Valve , Oulun kaupunki - City of Oulu , Oulu International School , Dhun Dealgan , Education Community

Sparking learning with culture - Cultural Heritage In Action Schools are more than just a building where young people passively receive an education. Schools are open, cultural spaces where students can be actors of their education thanks to culture and heritage products, services, or activities.

Pen-Pals across Europe

After the Culture United project had begun, the world was put on hold due to the Coronavirus, including Erasmus+ project activities. However, this did not stop everyone completely. Teachers and students of the Culture United project wanted to keep the connections they had made and therefore decided to start a pen-pal project.

“The students were very enthusiastic writing their letters, but they had to manage their expectations and practice their patience while waiting for responses,” said one teacher from Scotland. The partner teacher from Ireland also expressed that they were very surprised to see the students writing so neatly, as they understood that their letters would be read by other students. This is such a great example of interdisciplinary learning: by writing these letters they practice not only language and writing, but also storytelling and heritage, as pupils were telling about their local heritage such as the poet Robert Burns, Harry Potter and the Irish Saint Bridgid.

Although the pandemic is not affecting our lives as much, and almost everything has been opened again the pen-pal project has continued. It will also be expanding to include another primary school from the Netherlands. “It’s a great initiative inspired and sprung from the Culture United project, and I’m happy to see that we are continuing to impact the lives of students and teachers across Europe,” said Hester, a project manager of the Culture United Project.

https://www.cultureunited.eu/post/culture-united-meets-kunskade

CULTURE UNITED meets Kunskade! Culture United had it’s multiplier event at the 10th year anniversary of Kunstkade. Guests had a chance to participate in a variety of workshops. Culture United was one of the workshops during this event. During the activity of Culture United the guests got a few glimpse of the project; such as: A...

**Burns and Beyond, Harry Potter and Highland games**

Lorna McDonald from Edinburgh City Council and Evelyn Moore, a teacher at Flora Stevenson Primary School, organized the Multiplier Event for CULTURE UNITED in Edinburgh! They invited teachers from primary schools in the region to share information and learning materials about the CULTURE UNITED project, which is coming to an end this month. They showed the learning materials and resources created during 3 years of CULTURE UNITED to the teachers and talked about their experiences and the experiences of their peer teachers from Oulu (Finland), Leeuwarden (The Netherlands) and Dundalk (Ireland). But more importantly, they asked the children of Evelyn’s class (P7) what they found of the project and how their experience was!
"It was so much fun and exciting; I learned things I didn’t know before!"

Apart from the Burns and Beyond event that was organized by the Edinburgh Partners (Unique Events, Edinburgh City Council, and 3 primary schools in Edinburgh) in year one, Evelyn organized two other events with her class. As Covid meant that Burns and Beyond could not happen during year 2 of CULTURE UNITED, she simply organized an event INSIDE her classroom with her pupils.

The theme they produced was Harry Potter, as he might as well be just as famous and as Scottish as poet Robert Burns was. Edinburgh is the city where the writer of Harry Potter, J.K. Rowling, wrote many of the Harry Potter books and she has lived in Edinburgh since 1993. Using Harry Potter as a theme, Evelyn told stories and created ‘mysteries’ in her class to get the children creative and curious. In the middle of a class, you would suddenly scream (because yes: Evelyn really screams when she gets enthusiastic!) "LOOK! I JUST SAW HEDWIG AT THE WINDOWSILL!"

Needless to say, these actions got the kids’ creativity and imagination flowing. Evelyn used this to teach about heritage and reading (Harry Potter stories), but also about math and chemistry (creating magic potions and measuring out ingredients).

As this way of teaching (shall we call it CULTURE UNITED teaching?!) worked so well, during the 3rd year Evelyn asked the children what they would like to do in terms of ‘getting an event inside of their classroom’. The children came up with the highland games.

Highland games have been a part of Scotland's culture for hundreds of years and are just as popular today as they've ever been. And it's no wonder when you experience the sense of community, heritage and celebration at each of Scotland's Highland games. While centered on competitions in piping, drumming, dancing and Scottish heavy athletics, the games also include entertainment and exhibits related to other aspects of Scottish and Gaelic cultures.

The children and their teacher, Evelyn, organized their own highland games and learned about sports, dancing, friendship, and resilience. Resilience, because on the planned day of the games, the weather was so bad that they had to cancel and postpone…. Luckily, at the second try they were able to perform their games.

It was a great event, the pictures speak for themselves!

Join us in Brussels for the joint multiplier events for Culture United and Smart Hands.

December 6th, we wrap up two creative Erasmus projects in which ‘creativity’ is the common denominator. Are you a teacher and do you want to learn hands-on ways to get culture into your classroom? Or do you want to learn about creative ways to work more interdisciplinary? Or maybe you are an artist, craftsman or cultural organisation and you want to work (closer) together with schools? Come join us and dig into the free learning materials and toolkits we prepared for you.

December 6th, bibliotheek/library Muntpunt 6, 1000 Brussels.

Register for the event here:
https://docs.google.com/.../1FAIpQLSeWKD2vd0Nm1U.../viewform

Learning Hub Friesland Creative Spark Kunstkade The City of Edinburgh Council Oulu International School Kulttuuritalo Valve

The Results Are In ! #Oulu Culture United presented results to Oulu region cultural teachers and organisations! The Erasmus+project Culture United presented its results to Oulu region cultural teachers and organisations on Thursday 22.9. at 13.45-15.45 at the Oulu Music Centre. The Culture United project is built on cultural....

YEAH! We finalized the event organisers toolkit, including some good input from the European Festivals Association (EFA) and best practises from their members (festivals around the world). Ofcourse Hester van der Werff and Kathrin Deventer had to take a very serious picture together showing the Culture United toolkit leaflet, that EFA was most kind to let us distribute at their summit in Yerevan, Armenia.
The toolkit gives festival professionals tips and tools to start working with schools. Why start working with schools? Festivals inspire learning, and todays kids are tomorrows audiences.
Interested? You can download the toolkit here https://www.cultureunited.eu/copy-of-regional-education-culture-un

Globe Trottin Kids is a useful website that provides quality products and resources to engage kids in learning about world geography and cultures, understanding and appreciating diversity in our world, and becoming kind caring and responsible global citizens.

You can read this great article about Sharing Many Cultures in the Elementary Classroom, which also has suggested activities, books and songs.

Sharing Many Cultures in the Elementary Classroom | Globe Trottin' Kids Teaching about culture is an essential component of education. Students must understand their own cultural background as well as others’.

You can teach culture in the classroom in fun ways.

Here is a great song that helps children to understand that although we are different, we are one. 🎶🎵🎶🎵

we all sing with the same voice This is something my dad wanted me to put together :P

In this article, Cultural Heritage Through Image explains "5 Reasons Why We Should Teach the Value of Cultural Heritage to High School Students"

1) Understanding Means Appreciating
2) Students Will Be Inspired to Connect to Their Culture
3) Our Future Will Benefit from the Teaching of Cultural Heritage
4) We Connect to Each Other
5) We Can Work Together to Protect Cultural Heritage

Click on the link to view the article and read more.

https://culturalheritagethroughimage.omeka.net/5-reasons-why-we-should-teach-the-value-of-cultural-heritage-to-high-school-students