<< Background >>The project “Fair News” is a cooperation partnership to support innovation in the field of school education. The project aims not only to enhance understanding among high school students of the operation of fake-news, but also to work with students on a deep level in order to strengthen their understanding of how knowledge and media content is created and distributed. The project aims to help students to become more conscious readers, co-creators and co-distributors of knowledge.The project is addressed to high school students in four European countries (Italy, Romania, Bulgaria, Austria). As leading organisation, Fondazione Spazio Reale has a long tradition of developing and implementing social and cultural projects in the field of education, with an emphasis on multiculturalism, inclusion and ‘giving voices to difference’, thus motivating Fair News as a project designed to address the defined needs of high school students.In the current landscape, in which young people are exposed to multiplying media perspectives, the question of how knowledge is created, disseminated, and consumed is ever-more important. Young people need the ability to recognize bias and identify fair and trustworthy sources of news and information. Further, as the digital world becomes increasingly atomised, and much of social and civic life takes place online, many young people risk disconnection and isolation from the local, national, and international communities. A recent OECD Report, Developing Literacy Skills in a Digital World (2021) has highlighted the need for new skills in media literacy given the “massive information flow of the digital era.” The report shows that less than 50% of 15-year-olds in OECD countries were able to distinguish fact from opinion, with students in Italy and Austria below the OECD average. The report makes clear that schools are not, currently, fulfilling the role of teaching the skills necessary to navigate ambiguity and manage complexity in the digital world. New approaches are needed to develop these skills among high school students by creating broader educational communities beyond formal education and including a range of stakeholders.This necessity has been foregrounded by the COVID-19 pandemic, which has not only led to increased social isolation, but has also highlighted the importance of the ability to navigate and participate in digital media. The questions of what makes news fair, and how the voices of young people across Europe can be heard in the media landscape, is now of pressing importance. This means that there is a need to create broader connections between young people, to enhance their understanding of their reality, and to offer them spaces where they can not only reflect on their situation but can experiment with and experience a knowledge community. Recent movements, such as FridaysForFuture, have shown the depth of desire among young people to be heard, to participate in society, and to imagine alternative futures. We want students to possess the skills to take the lead in reshaping media discourse. As the future voters and makers of our reality, we believe that these skills are vital in supporting and enhancing democracy and we aim to create a community of mature listeners, media consumers and media creators.We believe that these needs can be approached from a holistic perspective by bringing together conceptual and practical knowledge in critical thinking, media literacy and news creation. By partnering with educational organisations, media producers and communication specialists in five European countries, we aim to facilitate and develop the skills and knowledge needed to understand and create news which is fair and inclusive, and so to foster a new form of educational community capable of enhancing social engagement and cohesion, in relation to the Key Competencies for Lifelong Learning laid out in the Recommendation of the Council of the European Union in May 2018.<< Objectives >>This project aims to help high school students to learn to navigate ambiguity and manage complexity.It will introduce them to the theory and practice of Fair News by:-Developing a deeper understanding of how knowledge is created, co-created, distributed and amplified in an increasingly complex digital landscape;-Improving awareness of the power of words and images from a holistic, multidisciplinary, and long-term perspective;-Offering a space in which students can learn and teach, enabling them to become media literate by listening as well as speaking to them, to prioritise the needs and voices of students;-Empowering students as digital citizens and participants in democratic life through new ways to consume, create, present and distribute their own news content.The innovative aspects of the project derive from:-The holistic approach which emphasises the transdisciplinary nature of knowledge and the need for a bottom-up approach to education, in which students are active co-creators of knowledge, and not placed solely as consumers or recipients; -The creation of educational communities at a local and transnational level, seeking to overcome disconnection and disengagement among high school students by bringing together schools, non-formal educational organisations, online student groups, and a broader network of stakeholders such as families, cultural organisations, and media producers.In accordance with the Erasmus+ General Objective of building a European Education Area and supporting the implementation of the European strategic cooperation in the field of education, the project will prioritise connection and collaboration between young people and educational organisations across Europe, creating an international and transnational educational community.The project aims not only to enhance the ability to identify and decode fake news, but also to work with educators and students to develop sophisticated understanding of how knowledge and content is created and distributed. While fake news is a societal concern for all ages, it has a huge relevance for young people. The ability to understand and evaluate information and knowledge is the foundation of becoming and being a conscious citizen. Further, young people, compared to older generations, use social media and peers on a large scale to access and share information. The focus of the project is not only on the ability to identify fake news, but on understanding and enabling a fair, co-created, and shared media landscape. The project’s objectives thus align with the Key Competencies defined in the EU Recommendation of May 2018 such as literacy and digital competence and cultural awareness and expression.By developing an educational community that brings together young people, educational organisations, schools and media producers, the project aims to challenge the ‘educational crisis’ that affects the relationship between generations and furthers social marginalisation and cultural exclusion. The project’s focus on collaboration and shared experiences resists the impulse to talk down to young people through the transmission of fixed knowledge, but rather seeks to develop new understanding and articulate new concepts through listening to the voices of young people themselves. Through developing the concept of ‘fair news’, we aim to help young people to become more conscious readers, creators and distributors of knowledge. Fair news involves not only the ability to detect and deconstruct disinformation and bias, but also to create and participate in a discourse which connects diverse social groups, fosters intergenerational communication, and allows young people to formulate and express their views, concerns, hopes and aspirations. Fair news is honest, communicative, inclusive, and equally representative of all; we seek to resist the idea of news as objective ‘truth’, and to deepen an understanding of knowledge developed through perception and interpretation<< Implementation >>The project will proceed through four stages of activities, aiming to achieve the project objectives by facilitating educational organisations in the theory and practice of Theory of Knowledge and Media and Information Literacy; training and facilitating high school students as co-creators of knowledge, using a holistic approach which prioritises their needs and capabilities according the the EU Recommendations of May 2018; training young students in the theory and practice of media literacy and media creation, including the production and distribution of knowledge and hand-on experience.The implementation of the project will use methodologies drawn from two disciplines:-Theory of Knowledge (TOK): A purposeful enquiry into ways of knowing, including the interpretative nature of knowledge and its creation across multiple disciplines, enabling students to understand their own perceptions and beliefs, and appreciate the diversity of cultural perspectives. TOK is a key part of the International Baccalaureate curriculum, and the implementation of this project will make the discipline accessible to a wider audience of students and educators;-Media and Information Literacy (MIL): Defined by UNESCO as “a set of competencies that empowers citizens to access, retrieve, understand, evaluate and use, to create as well as share information and media content in all formats, using various tools, in a critical, ethical and effective way, in order to participate and engage in personal, professional and societal activities.” Competencies in MIL are closely aligned with those laid out in the May 2018 EU Council Recommendations for Lifelong Learning.The structure of the project is the following:Phase 1 (4 months): Research, training and facilitation of educators in experiences, needs, and skills in critical thinking, Theory of Knowledge and Media and Information Literacy for high school students.This phase foresees a transnational training activity (C1) for educational workers, involving all partners, followed by a series of webinars through which educators can share their experience of the problems faced by students and develop a methodological approach to solutions. The training will be facilitated by Traces&Dreams. Phase 2 (6 months): Collaborative laboratories with high school students on critical thinking and Theory of Knowledge.This phase foresees a series of collaborative laboratories, hosted by educational organisations in each country with the methodological support of Traces&dreams. Transnational communication and collaboration will be enabled through digital blended learning. The laboratories will foster understanding of critical thinking and the Theory of Knowledge through analysis of how knowledge is created and disseminated in the media. Young people will develop the skills to share their experience and communicate their understanding through personal and group projects.Phase 3 (6 months): Practical workshops on principles of Media and Information Literacy and the creation and distribution of knowledge.This phase foresees a series of practical workshops focusing on media literacy, digital citizenship, and the analysis, production and distribution of news in various media, held with high school students in each country with the methodological support of Traces&Dreams and Toscana Oggi. The participants will produce their own digital newspaper based on the concepts of ‘fair news’.Phase 4 (2 months): Installations and Digital Newspaper launchMultiplier events in each country, through which young people will launch the digital newspaper, share their knowledge and their creations, act as ambassadors to their peers and engender an ongoing educational community including all stakeholders.<< Results >>OUTCOMES.For partner organisations:The project will introduce partners to theoretical, methodological and practical concepts related to critical thinking, the Theory of Knowledge and Media and Information Literacy. The focus on collaboration and learning-through-doing will enable organisations to develop a new form of education through facilitation, which can be utilised in both their work with students through this project and through future projects with young people.Schools and educational organisations will become increasingly aware of the problems of fake news and social disconnection among young people, and will enhance their ability to adopt a holistic and bottom-up approach when addressing these issues.Strategic relationships will be formed between schools, partner organisations and other stakeholders within and between countries, enabling an ongoing ‘enlarged’ educational community.Traces&Dreams will lead the preparation of educational material on critical thinking, the Theory of Knowledge and media literacy that will be accessible to a broad audience.For students:The project will enable students to understand the detection and deconstruction of fake news, and the principles underlying fair news, using an innovative bottom-up approach which emphasises the experiences, views and needs of students.Students will gain enhanced abilities in critical thinking, Media and Information Literacy and the Theory of Knowledge, according to the EU Recommendations of May 2018.Students will also develop practical skills and abilities in content production and dissemination, including the production of their own media creations based on the principles of fair news.RESULTS.The outcomes of the project will be synthesised, realised and shared through the following Project Results:PR1: Formative report on the creation and development of educational communities using methodologies of Theory of Knowledge and Media and Information LiteracyLeader: Spazio Reale. All partners participate. Based on the training activities undertaken through C1, the knowledge created and the experiences shared will be developed into a document reflecting the needs of students in relation to MIL, and the use of TOK in the creation of educational communities, to be implemented through laboratories and workshops with high school students and designed for ongoing use and adaptation in various contexts.PR2: Framework for innovative pathways in the use of Theory of Knowledge among high school students Leader: Centrul de Resurse si Consultanta in Educatie. All partners participate. Based on the theoretical innovation and practical application of the training activities undertaken with high school students and the methodologies defined through PR1, this result will present a document outlining the use of critical thinking, Theory of Knowledge and media literacy in facilitating the skills and competencies required for high school students to participate in democratic life through the understanding and creation of fair news and the formation of broader educational communities. PR3: Resources for the creation and dissemination of Fair NewsLeader: Traces&Dreams. Toscana Oggi participate. Based on the innovative experimentation defined through PR2 and the practical activities in the production and sharing of news by high school students undertaken through workshops, this result will present a hands-on guide for the creation and communication of fair news from the perspectives of high school students, and its realisation through a digital newspaper.

The Project Art@Heart - Social Handcraft Experience is a strategic partnership to support the innovation of the adult Education branch, created and projected to answer at the extraordinary call “Strategic partnerships created to answer at the health emergency COVID-19” .The partnership is made up of Associazione Atelier degli Artigianelli (italia) as project leader, LAO Le Arti Orafe (Italia), Fondazione Spazio Reale (Italia), Escuela de Arte 3 (Spagna) and PIKC Liepajas Muzikas, makslas un dizaina vidusskola (Lettonia).The health emergency due to the pandemic of COVID-19 has harshly damaged the cultural and creative sectors and has restricted the way the people relate to each other.This project wants to improve the growth of skills and expertise that strengthen the creativity, promote the quality and innovation and support the adult’s creative potential, contributing to the resilience of the cultural and creative sectors. The project will reinforce the social inclusion through the arts, promoting innovative approach based on the intercultural and participative dialogue that relate education, training and the organization of cultural and creative sectors.The project has the aim to develop innovative results and promote the spread of the good practice to realize non formal training laboratories of artistic crafts, testing new distances manners (MOOC) on a subject, the artisan one, mark out instead of the modality purely in presence.The project also seeks to support the development of key skills and the knowledge of self-entrepreneurship.The project is intended to 10 adults for each organized laboratory by partners. If the participants were different from each other, we could consider that the total number of beneficiaries could reach 120, since the project involves the realization of 4 workshops organized by the lead partner, 4 by LAO, 2 by the Spanish partner and 2 by the Latvian partner. However, this is not to be considered a certain fact as some participants may decide to attend several different workshops.The specific targets that the project wants to reach are: the exchange of the good practices between the project partners regarding the ways of remote transmission of knowledge and skills; fulfillment of the guide lines for the planning of the practical learning opportunity in presence, or at distance, regarding the artistic craft topic; creation of practical training laboratories of artistic craft (blended way) in Italy, Spain and Latvia; invention of a MOOC form dedicated to self-entrepreneurship (multilingual, available to all the participants – with an open source issue available to a wide public); research and development of key competences, such as linguistics and digitals for adults, through webinars; promotion and organization of the artistic and cultural activities.This project wants to offer to the attendees the possibility to develop their own skills, increase the knowledge and develop the use of the TIC, encourage the learning of knowledge and the expertise for the personal progression in order to have a greater social inclusion, by a series of artistic laboratories in presence or at a distance. All these activities will have the purpose to enhance the participants’ curricula useful in the job market.The project also plans to raise the following impressions on the indirect recipient and on the communities:•Promote and encourage the creativity.•Offer social inclusion paths through the artistic expression.•Promote the continuous learning for adults while promoting the access to improvement skills paths.•Enhance the growth of ability and competence.•Support the use of digital devises, especially for adults (non digital native) •Raise the talent and promote the culture of the self-entrepreneurship.•Promote and examine in depth applied methodologies and techniques of non formal training, in presence and at a distance, in the artistic craft sphere.•Support transnational partnership.•Promote models and instruments to impart knowledges in remote modality.•Promote and organize artistic and cultural activities.•Support the progression of cultural and creative sectors.

The ACT-ABLE Project - drama education lab for young people with disabilities is a strategic partnership supporting innovations of the school sector, this partnership is composed of Fondazione Spazio Reale, being the applicant, Soccorso Clown (Italy), Fondazione Toscana Spettacolo (Italy), University of Usak (Turkey) and Residui Teatro (Spain). The project wants to favour the educative inclusion of students with intellective disabilities through inclusive methods such as theatre, with innovative methodologies such as physical comedy and visual theatre, storytelling, dance-theater and vocalism as instruments of personal potential, and enhancing their learning abilities.This Project starts from multi-yearly experience of the concerned partners based on the idea that guarantees the actual function of the right to study and training, is one of the main factors that mainly touches the world of the disabled. As this is an important condition to the aim of their complete integration and inclusion in a social and working life. It is intended for children and youths with intellectual disability, the age range aimed at this educational cannot be decided with chronological strictness, both for the type of disability and for the variables that coincide on the advantageous participation to the proposed course. Generally, the project is aimed at students within the range of first and second grades of the secondary school.The project includes:-Five days training course for the staff to share their own methods of inclusive theatre and activate a common method to use during the project.-Drawing European guidelines which contain the methodology to use so as to start these inclusive theatre courses based on physical comedy and visual theatre in Italy, Turkey and Spain.-The realisation of these inclusive theatre courses taught the methodology of the physical comedy and of the visual theatre, destined to 24 youths with disabilities within the age of 11 and 15 in Italy; 10 youths from 12 to 24 in Turkey and 16 youths between 11 and 18 in Spain.-The creation of the theatrical company ACT-ABLE, made up of actors/mentors and the youths that have participated in the inclusive theatrical pathways held in Italy, as an example and inspiration for the birth of other mixed theatrical companies at a European level.-Of the commune conclusive document based on the results obtained during these courses and which will give life to “ACT-ABLE method: good methodological ways of inclusive theatre”.Through these activities the project intends: to improve the learning capacity of young people, help the scholastic institution with a new and inclusive offer, with an exchange of good ways between mentors and European organizations that use these inclusive theatrical methods; form professionals and make aware the stakeholders and the local communities through these artistically inclusive events.

The “Health Care Clown Pathways” project is a Strategic Partnership supporting the innovation in the Educational and Vocational Training Sector (VET).This project has been created for the importance of the professional role of the Healthcare Clown professional in the performing arts, aimed at assist and relieve the patients’ anxiety and fear, especially children and elders, in the healthcare institutions and social care services. This awareness has origin from experiences at European level, which demonstrate that the Healthcare Clown fosters the humanization process in the healthcare environment. Meanwhile, in different European countries, with the only exception of the France thanks to Le Rire Médecin, project’s partner, the training for the Healthcare Clown is not regulated, as it does not exist as formal qualified profession. This project has born to provide for this gap in the training sector. The partnership is composed of Soccorso Clown Onlus (Italy) as Applicant, Fondazione Spazio Reale (Italy), Le Rire Médecin (France), Dr. Klauns (Latvia), Sykehusklovnene (Norway) and Universidade do Minho (Portugal).Its transnational dimension is represented by the fact that the organizations already work together in the EFCHO context, which is also a project’s supporter, to qualify and to regulate the professional role of the Healthcare Clown. Also the researchers’ role of the University of Minho will be fundamental, since for several years they carry out studies in this sector and they are members of H-CRIN+, Healthcare Clowning Research International Network, that is also a supporter of the project.The project has the following objectives:-Designing, realizing, testing and validating an innovative training proposal, aimed at defining the competences requested to work as Healthcare Clown in a sharing and transferable manner at European level;-Proposing the European level training standards to obtain the qualified profession as Healthcare Clown, referring to ECVET and EQF Systems.These objectives will be achieved through the following results:-European guidelines that include the definition of the profession of the Healthcare Clown, in terms of key competences and profession qualification according to the standard of the ECVET system (European Credit System for Vocational Education and Training) and EQF system (European Qualifications Framework).-Methodological Framework for design and implementation of the training formal pathway, transferable at European level to achieve the Professional Qualification of Healthcare Clown, professional in the performing arts, on the basis on the EQF and ECVET Systems.-Experimentation of some formal pathways in Italy, Latvia, Norway. The objective of this pilot courses consists in testing the course’s structure, the training objectives, the organization facilities, the training methods, the didactic materials with the aim of a final validation.-Digital Resources Centre. It will be a web platform that will make available and accessible the results of the intellectual output, the pilot courses realized, studies and researches, tools and methods, didactic materials, audio recording and video (videos, interviews, multimedia resources) of the activities carried out, on the basis of OER (Open Educational Resources).The beneficiaries will be adults, with marked comic talent, eclectic actors coming from different theatrical backgrounds, who have experience in working with children and adults.

<< Objectives >>VHC is a Cooperation Partnership in the field of VET aimed to produce a digitally focused syllabus and designed procedures, tools and competences in order to adapt “Healthcare Clowns” Organisations to the needs and conditions of the labour market.The goal is to improve the digital contents in the training of HCC professionals, and so to promote innovative, virtual healthcare clown interventions to match the needs of the ongoing Covid-19 emergency and of other logistically disadvantaged areas.<< Implementation >>The VHC project foresees the following activities:•WP1: Project Management and Coordination, Communication, Monitoring and Evaluation.●WP2: Integrated Contents for VHC Training: a digitally focused syllabus for HCC professionals in compliance with ECVET criteria; ●WP3: VHC Cooperative Platform: a platform for VHC training course and HCC procedures;●WP4: VHC Training Course for Healthcare Clown Operators: experimentation of the online course through the platform and its validation .<< Results >>The VHC project foresees the following outcomes and results:•to develop digital skills for HCC professionals: R1: VHC Training Handbook;•to learn, develop and transfer the tools and procedures usually used by HCC professionals in a new working digital environment: R2: VHC Cooperative Platform;•to improve their employability with virtual clown-therapy interventions in hospitals and socio-health facilities: R3: VHC Online Training.