"Our project titled „UNITED IN MUSIC“ involved 60 creative and talented students and 20 Music, IT and foreign language teachers from four different cultural and geographical regions of Europe, i.e. French school - College Maxence Van Der Meersch - from the West, Romanian school - Liceul cu Program Sportiv Alba Iulia - from the East, Lithuanian school - Varėnos ""Ąžuolo"" gimnazija - from the North and Italian school - Liceo delle Scienze Umane e Musicale ""Sebastiano Satta"" - from the South.During a two-year period, 13-17-year-old students familiarized themselves with the heritage of local and their partners’ folk music, through a project website they created, www.unitedinmusic.eu.; rehearsed and performed in 3 concerts authentic songs and their arrangements internationally in two learning activities in France and Lithuania as well as at the workhop in Italy. The international team of students and teachers released a final product, a CD, with 17 authentic folk songs and 5 arrangements.This huge and amazing trans-nationally carried out work have had a great many impacts on all its participants locally as well as internationally, especially on participating students and teachers, stimulating their creativity, self-confidence, teaching tolerance, encouraging openness to the world by discovering different European countries through a common theme of music. Our schools, thanks to the project advertising, have become more attractive for future students . In Italian partners' school, the project also helped to prevent school dropouts. Moreover, the schools involved in the project will keep in touch for new projects and exchange of good practices And finally, the most important, love for music expressed through common work of children and teachers from four different European countries has established sustainable traditions of enjoying making music together."

Nowadays, music in Europe is a powerful tool for cohesion and unity. Festivals flourish every year, that allow European citizens to discover the neighbouring countries and to know each other by gathering around the same passion, music.The Erasmus project we are carrying out aims at highlighting the cultural diversity of Europe while diving into its popular roots. This project will involve 70 creative and talented students and 20 teachers of different subjects, music, dance, foreign languages ​​and computer sciences, from five different cultural and geographical regions of Europe, namely a French school, a Bulgarian school, a Greek school, a Romanian school and an Italian school.Between these different partners, there is a common denominator: the desire to sing a traditional musical repertoire by combining dance because traditional music has the primary function of dancing, it is an inseparable link in any European culture.But it is also the desire to work on the specificity of each language because the mother tongue gives meaning to the traditional song by its rhythm, its intonation, its accentuation, its intonation ...For a period of two years, students aged 13 to 15 will become familiar with the language and heritage of their partners' local folk music through a project website and languages teaching method ​​they will create. They will have the chance to rehearse, play and dance in authentic folk music concerts around the world as part of four learning activities in Romania, Greece, Italy and France.They will publish a final product, a DVD, containing 20 pieces of authentic music and at least 10 dances. To achieve the results of the project, in the first year students will exchange in English and will work in groups to create a simple method of teaching their mother tongue.They will subsequently have to exchange it with their foreign peers.They will work 4 types of traditional songs whose texts will be analyzed and translated; they will write articles and put copied scores online on the website created for the project.They will also make music and dance videos, so that learning from other countries will be easier. They will also learn passages from national and folk songs of their partners to be sung together.Student profiles, language teaching methods and video clips will complete the website.During this first year, an initial meeting between teachers will be held in Bulgaria, where coordinators and music teachers will meet for the first time and decide on the timeline for the first year. Romania will host its partners, teachers and students. Together, they will work on three languages ​​of the project Romanian, Greek and Bulgarian and will give their first concert with some authentic folk songs and dances.At the end of this school year there will be a mobility in Greece more specifically reserved for the exchange between the various folk dances.During the second year, local activities will involve work similar to that of the first year. A more elaborate concert will be performed in Italy as well as a final concert with all the songs and dances in France in a beautiful concert hall involving local actors. A DVD of the songs and dances will be created and the methods of languages ​​will be online and printed, to be used by all participants. It will also be an opportunity to work during workshops teaching activity on Italian and French languages ​​as these will be the next destinations during the year.CLIL will be used in the process. Europass documents will be used to recognize its results. The partners involved in the project all have strong roots with the popular dance community within their school or through groups or associations that will promote exchanges with local partners.We, the project's teachers, believe that transnational work will have many effects on all participants, both locally and internationally, especially on students and teachers, by stimulating their cooperation, their creativity, their solidarity, their confidence in themselves, their tolerance, etc ... and by encouraging the development of innovative teaching practice and encouraging openness to the world by discovering different European countries through a common musical theme. Finally, most importantly, the love of music and dance expressed in the common work of students from five different European countries will establish long lasting traditions of enjoying and sharing music together.

During the period of two years, 70 students from five European countries worked together on the project entitle 'Music Shapes Europe'. These students have had the chance to display their talent and creativity while familiarizing themselves with their own folk music, as well as finding out about their partners‘ heritage of folk music and language via their created project website www.https://mseur.wordpress.com/, common rehearsals, discussions, creative group work and live performances in multinational teams.During the first year, students in each country, worked in groups, chose the national songs that would be sung during the concerts (4 by country)and created a project website, in which they uploaded:- their profiles - a glossary of everyday sentences in their mother tongue - videos of sketches displaying these sentences - the scores, lyrics and videos of the songs that would be sung during the concerts The uploaded materials were reviewed and discussed by all partner schools.Each group learnt their 4 national songs as well as 4 songs from their partners (1 per country) : these song were rehearsed to perform internationally at the final year mobility - concert in Spain. Language teachers helped their students with pronunciation of the lyrics of the partners songs, and workshops were organized by Italian, Spanish and French teams to introduce their partners with the particularities of their language, phonetically speaking (sounds, rhythm and stress). At the end of this mobility, the students performed their first concert, each team singing 3 of their songs on their own and one with their partners (so 5 songs were sung in international groups). Europass mobility tool was used to validate the outcomes.To achieve a more sophisticated project result – to sing as many songs altogether as possible - a transnational meeting was held at the beginning of the second year,in Slovakia. During this meeting Music and English teachers from all partner schools worked on all the songs of the projects. Each national group taught their songs and their pronunciation to the other groups. During the meeting, the teachers also decided to improve the quality of the final concert by involving the musicians of the Italian school orchestra. Each music teacher decided on the songs that would be accompanied by the orchestra and sent the scores for the different instruments provided by the Italian school. After this meeting, teachers were able to teach all the international songs to their students. The second year was thus devoted to the learning of international songs. The students met on a second occasion in Denmark to attend workshops on Danish and Slovak language, as well as to perform a second concert during which they sang their national songs and 10 songs altogether. Once again, Europass mobility tool was used to validate the outcomes.The students met for the third and last time in Italy to perform the final concert, which was the outcome of the two-year-project and was recorded for the final product. Students sang only 5 songs in national teams and 15 songs altogether, thus reflecting the evolution of their work.Throughout the two years, we had an artistic contest to choose the best logo The logos from all partners were uploaded on the website and the teachers at the initial teachers‘ meeting in France voted for the best one, which became the project logo. Groups of IT students worked on and prepared the videos . Each concert was recorded and uploaded, so that it is possible to see the evolution and improvement of the quality of the work. Students also edited videos of each mobility .Their full videos can be watched on the project website as well as in the DVD released by the Italian school .Students with their teachers also went to the concerts of folk music or met the folk singers. Ours students are to become active European citizens, and Europe is rich of many different cultures. We strongly believe it is important for them to discover other cultures, to be curious of their neighbours, to accept differences as a strength. Thus, through a common theme, folk music, our young European citizens fostered creativity, co-operation,communication, usage of ICT , foreign languages, which are crucial skills in modern society. Teachers were also fostered to use and exchange innovative teaching methods (parts of CLIL), especially in preparing and carrying out international teaching/learning activities and the workshop; teachers of Music, IT, foreign languages and headmasters successfully cooperated among themselves and with their own students, with colleagues and students from abroa