23.05.2022, Ascoli Piceno, Italy.
https://www.tenforsustainability.eu/SustainArt.html
The in-person kick-off meeting of the project “Sustainability as the art … of resilience” (www.tenforsustainability.eu/SustainArt.html) has been held on Monday 23rd May 2022 in Ascoli Piceno (Italy), with participants from the following organizations: Ten For Sustainability (Project Applicant and Coordinator, Italy), AIFED – Asociacion de Innovacion Formaciony Empleo para el Desarrollo Sostenible (Spain), Challedu (Greece), Geoclube – Associação Juvenil de Ciência, Natureza e Aventura (Portugal), Asociatia de Dezvoltare Intercomunitara Harghita (Romania), Scientia Nova (The Republic of North Macedonia). The project is co-financed by the Erasmus+ program of the European Union.
The project stems from the perspective that the resilience literacy, as the capacity of people to creatively adapt, can be activated and accessed by using art and culture contents and toolset as an essential dimension, referring to art and culture both in their universal sense, as well as how to arts-based culture public perception and experience are shaped.
The transnational project meeting has been an opportunity to identify, explore and exchange of good practices focusing, among others, on the following:
– major concrete challenges and opportunities Partner Organizations are facing, as a consequence of the covid pandemic, especially in relation to their adult education provisions;
– how “resilience literacy” can be useful to reorient pre-service and in-service training of educators, teachers and other staff members, within organization, especially in the aftermath of the covid pandemic as well as other current societal challenges;
– current state-of-the-art within Partner Organizations as regards equipping the staff at all levels towards upskilling paths, specifically in connection to environmental sustainability and art.
We’d like to highlight the following outcomes:
a) Resilience literacy is critical now more than ever, after a two-years Covid time full of anxiety and fear for everyone, including members of Partners’ staff at all levels. Hence reliance literacy resonate with the innate capacity of individuals to overcome the initial blockage and find new and creative ways to adapt to changed contexts. The “physiognomy” of such innate capacity can be investigated to favor its acquisition by individuals and groups, thanks also to continuous experiential training and development, where problematic issues are not skipped but are faced and addressed, where possibly like an orchestra, allowing for a better re-start after major crisis, focusing especially on motivational training, involving also expertise from psychologists or other professionals in the helping relationship space.
b) a particularly valuable practice, consequence of the covid pandemic, has been the institutionalization in some of the Partners of bi-weekly team building sessions, conducted by experts, to explore and share each other’s struggles, learning more about each other’s perspectives and improving both the personal and the professional bonds and empathy; especially useful in this perspective have been non-formal educational techniques such as games, interactive activities, storytelling and improvisation.
c) An outstanding good practice to promote resilience of staff and targeted beneficiaries has been shared, connected to a digital game created to promote agricultural entrepreneurship by providing valuable knowledge via game based learning and inspiring users to engage with agro-entrepreneurship along with the adoption of sustainability guides included in new staffers/volunteers initial training, advising, among others, eco-friendly concrete actions and approaches, to be considered as part of Organizations’ inspiring values.
Funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Education and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA). Neither the European Union nor EACEA can be held responsible for them.
