Creative Connections

Communicating across Europe

You may be a teacher, a student, a school pupil, an academic, a parent or just interested in exploring European Identity; we hope you will find something of interest in this catalogue so please read on. We do not claim to have found a definition for being a ‘European’, but we have developed knowledge and understanding to help those of you who ponder such issues and those of you who have to teach and learn about them.

In January 2012, the Creative Connections project united educational research teams in six European higher education institutions with the goal of finding innovative and practical ways of developing connectedness between schools and pupils in Europe. The research was funded by the EU Comenius Fund (517844).

Education for Democratic Citizenship to ‘equip young people and adults to play an active part in democratic life and exercise their rights and responsibilities in society’ is a key focus of the Council of Europe (2009). Despite programmes of Citizenship Education across Europe, the complex nature of how young peo

Led by the University of Roehampton (UK), the teams in Ireland, Portugal, the Czech Republic, Finland and Spain came together to develop and promote an active inter-country dialogue, specifically between children, to enhance understanding of different perspectives on European citizenship. Our aim is to evolve European-level connectedness through children’s ‘voices’; giving them the opportunity to communicate with one another, to discuss their responses to tasks and to comment upon each other’s visual art works. Affording them this opportunity to develop strong communication skills through their connections can also be viewed as a significant means of giving them an empowered role in the research process.

Art education and practice has been central to our work and in this catalogue there are examples of the work we have undertaken over the past three years. It should be read in conjunction with our website – www.creativeconnexions.eu – so that your interests can lead you to the lesson plans, resources, galleries and reflections available now and well into the future. We hope that you are inspired by what you view and we welcome your contributions and feedback. All materials are free to use and to share.