Traditionally the term ‘heritage’ is used to describe a people’s language, culture or architecture in a historic way. More current definitions of heritage focus rather on contemporary society in terms of what people have in common, promoting the values of diversity, civic participation and intercultural understanding. A city’s heritage is no longer a set of buildings, archeological sites or statues of people showcasing historic facts but also a set of values that promote civic engagement and participation, openness to society and critical thinking.
The Covid-19 pandemic is already changing the way people are engaging with each other and how they are supporting their local communities and national initiatives. Activities related to civic engagement have become stronger than ever during this pandemic, getting people closer together during a time of extreme physical isolation. There will be a lot of mourning and reflection at the end of this crisis, but also quite a lot to celebrate on. Civic engagement is bound to be a success story.The project Our Civic Heritage seeks to promote European common values and civic education and engagement in Europe. It addresses three types of target groups:
· members of the public that are interested in civic participation activities,
· educators that teach civic participation and cultural heritage, and
· policy makers and those working in the cultural heritage and civic sector whether in a public or private capacity.
The project’s aim is the promotion of European civic identity and engagement through the following specific objectives:
- Enabling intercultural understanding
- Promoting European cultural diversity
- Embracing the common European values of openness, civic engagement, critical thinking, human rights
- Increasing civic capacity training initiatives
- Strengthening digital literacy and enabling digital engagement
- Strengthening digital European citizenship actions
The project creates easily adaptable and transferable outputs
- digital library with study cases of civic engagement initiatives in action,
- civic heritage methodology,
- digital impact stories,
- training kit to digital civic actions,
- curriculum for civic skills development and actions with high potential of adapting to different learning styles and transferability to other countries and environments.
The project is being implemented by a partnership consisting of 10 organizations from 8 different European countries – The Netherlands, Ireland, United Kingdom, Bulgaria, Romania, Spain, Italy and Iceland for a period of 32 months, from November 2020 till June 2023.
More information will be available soon on the project website: https://civic-heritage.eu/.
Financial support: European Commission, Erasmus + Programme
Duration: 1 November 2020 to 30 June 2023.
This project has been funded with support from the European Commission. This website and all its contents reflect the views only of the author, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.