Youth, remembrance and creativity in face of society’s identity crisis - the role of memorial sites in Europe
Fundació Solidaritat Universitat de Barcelona - European
Observatory on Memories (EUROM), Barcelona (SPAIN)
The Fundació Solidaritat UB was created in 1996 to implement the cooperation policy of the University of Barcelona and promote democracy and human rights. Within the University of Barcelona, 5.315 students are affiliated members of the Fundació.
In the last 20 years it has launched several projects for the recovery of historical and democratic memory. Since 2012 it promotes the European Observatory on Memories (EUROM), a transnational platform that today integrates 44 partners from the EU and beyond. Its aim is analysing remembrance policies and promoting the access of citizens to memorial processes including, of course, university and high school students.
High school Aristide Maillol was created 20 years ago in a disadvantaged area of Perpignan. It is a secondary school, for pupils from 14 to 18 years of age. Recently, in order to respond to social difficulties specific to this urban area, a particular section was created to receive younger pupils with the aim to facilitate their reintegration in the professional school system.
High school Aristide Maillol has multiple purposes - it is a professional school dedicated to tertiary education and a generalist school offering classical qualifications. These educational programs are dedicated to a local public, essentially pupilsmarked by social difficulties from peripheral areas as well as more rural villages.
Liceo Rosmini is a State Italian High School that offers secondary education to students from 14 to 19 years of age. The school has a Linguistic section and a Human Science / Socio – Economic section.
The school is based in Maremma, in southern Tuscany, with an economy based on agriculture and tourism and with a low level of industrialization. The school involves a wide area including small hillside villages and the students are predominantly female. The majority of 1,200 students who attended the Liceo Rosmini belong to a middle / low social level and therefore the school offers financial contribution to allow them to study foreign languages or acquire computer skills.
OSZ Lotis is situated in the center of the city, close to the former inner-city airport Tempelhof and its students come from all over Berlin. The school offers a variety of qualifications in the fields of Business Studies, Economics and Administration for students from the age of 16.
OSZ Lotis is one of the „Oberstufenzentren“ colleges in Berlin, which are organized in different professional-related fields. This type of school combines a variety of different courses and qualifications – it is more permeable and it has become attractive for many students, a lot of them from families with an immigration background. The right of social participation and individual development regardless of characteristic features of heterogeneity like ethnic/cultural affinities, gender, sexual orientation and religion has been one of the major issues at the OSZ Lotis for a long time.
The secondary school Marcel Pagnol in Perpignan counts around 640 students from the sixth to the third grade and more or less 60 teachers. The school is situated in the city and has been classified as a priority education zone.
The number of underprivileged families is very high with more than 81% being either laborers or unemployed. 74% of the families are entitled to government help which is twice as much of the academy’s average. This figure has kept increasing for the past 4 years. The pupils attending this school have different multicultural backgrounds and often difficult living conditions, some of them with special needs, learning disabilities or those recently arrived to France.
High school Narcís Monturiol is situated in the town of Figueres, in the North-Eastern part of Catalonia. It was founded in 1976 and it belongs to the network of public schools funded by the Government of Catalonia. Nowadays it has a student population of 844 learners in four different educational areas and staff of 82 teachers.
A considerable part of students comes from Marca de l'Ham district, an area of the town that is densely populated by immigrant citizens. Thus, the school hosts a total of about 33% of students who come from non-EU countries, especially from northern Africa, South America and Central America.
ISGREC is affiliated to the Italian network INSMLI and is a non-profit organisation connected by a convention to the Department of Education, the Province and City of Grosseto. ISGREC's objectives are, in accordance with its Statute: to study the contemporary history, to collect memories and testimonies, to protect and promote the cultural heritage, to find tools for communication and education.
ISGREC has a particular interest and experience in the relation between local and European memories. They disseminate results of their historical research through publications, multimedia products, exhibitions and conferences. ISGREC has an educational section which is involved in projects with schools: workshops with students, training for teachers etc.
The Exile Memorial Museum Consortium is a public body constituted for the establishment and joint management, in the town of La Jonquera, of the Museum under this name, whose object is the exhibition, research, interpretation and dissemination of historical events related to exiles.
The Memorial Museum of Exile is dedicated mainly to the dissemination of history and memory related to the Spanish Civil War, republican exile and Franco dictatorship, taking also into account the phenomenon of exile globally in the context of the twentieth century until today. This objective is carried out mainly through the Educational and Pedagogical Service, created in 2008, which has a long history of work with students and teachers of secondary and university education.
CHC is a non-profit organization founded with the objective to use education, culture and creativity for development of local Croatian communities through transmission of knowledge and European expertise and through promotion of art practices.
By working in three interconnected fields: education, cultural partner projects, art and creativity - the mission of the CHC is to provide innovative and sustainable educational opportunities, to encourage art as a teaching methodology, achieve social inclusion and tolerance through creative programs, increase the number of trained professionals and educators by establishing programs for specialized trainings in collaboration with European partners, increase the quality of life-long learning in Croatia; join international networks and foster new collaborations; and to provide support to cultural professionals, artists and interested individuals in finding funds, planning and implementing projects.
