Through our own eyes

Erasmus+ Project No: 2017-1-EL01-KA204-036310

Context
This partnership was triggered by the difficulty our schools and adult education centres face regarding the inclusion of newly arrived refugees. Some of our non-migrant students have difficulty accepting refugees in our classes and radicalization of both local youth and adults is taking place.

Target group and needs
To combat this issue, we, education and training professionals asked to include refugees in our classes, needed a tool that could transform attitudes. By conducting research on what method we could use, we discovered “Transformative learning through aesthetic experience”, a method that was developed by the Hellenic Open University and uses art to help learners discover faults in their attitudes. However, the hardest part of this method is deciding which piece of art to use for each goal. Therefore, we decided to
form a partnership that would help us create an online repository of pieces of art that could be used to transform negative attitudes towards refugees. Since our topic is the current refugee crisis, we thought it would be a good idea to locate art based on the experience of emigration that our countries have (e.g. Greek emigrants to Germany in the previous century), and use it a springboard that will help learners relate to the refugee condition.

Goal and objectives
Hence, the goal of this project is to create an online database of art from countries at the forefront of the refugee crisis (Greece, Turkey, Italy, France), as well as an accompanying handbook on how to use this art in order to transform negative attitudes towards refugees. At the end of this project, teachers and trainers in Greece, Turkey, Italy, France and elsewhere will have access to:

  • an online database of art dealing with emigration, and
  • a handbook on “Transformative learning through aesthetic experience”

that will enable them to design and implement transformative learning interventions for their students.

Why trans-nationally?
This project should be carried transnationally, since the refugee crisis is transnational and organisations in many different countries face the same problem. Furthermore, many EU countries have also experienced emigration in the past, an experience that is also represented in their national arts. So, the opportunity to use this art for educational and social purposes is also a transnational opportunity.