ERASMUS+ School Education in Florence, Italy

Course Title: Active Art – Understanding and Enjoying Art in the Classroom and Beyond

Dear newsletter followers, thise of you whi read our last article ont he Erasmus+ programme will know that our project title was:

Removing barriers through new teaching methodologies as part of moving towards a better classroom experience for children with social deficiencies

Why this course? What are the issues we are trying to resolve?

When selecting our courses, we were looking at the context of our school and our most pertinent needs. As you all know, at the heart of “Dimitar Ekimov” school are the Arts and Crafts. Surely, we can never go too far away from this topic, so we ultimately searched for a course that checks all our boxes. It had to be focused on the classroom experience, be Arts related and to teach us new methodologies while also allowing us to learn about ourselves and give us food for though on what kind of teachers and mentors we really want to be. Thankfully, this course incorporated all these aspects and more!

The programme

Here’s an outlook on what the programme included:

Inititally we had the chance to present our school in the ice-breaker session. It was really funny and interesting to share our roles in our organisation with other participants from various other European countries and to raise awareness about our one of a kind school to the rest of the group. Of course, since we all chose this topic, everyone who attended was a professional from the Arts’ field and we had so much in common. So much so, that by the end of our trip we had invitations to visit at least 3 more countries! Isn’t this a blessing?!

The content of the course touched upon emotions inside and outrside of the classrom, creative thinking, Art therapy, intuitive drawing, colours and self expression – a wonderful journey within oneself! What is more, we had many practical tasks during which we painted together, discussed some deep topics, did some sculptures, and tried to express our feelings on paper using our intuition and so much more. It was truly inspiring as we worked in groups with people who we bare knew but by the end of it all we felt so close to each other. A very good team buildign exprence afterall.

Participants’ feedback

I love the Arts and how it makes me look within to find some important answers!

This course thought me some really cool ways to teach kids to express themselves more.

Trully fascinating city – Florence is!

I wanna visit Italy again!

I wan to take part in Erasmus again!

Here’s more info about how to apply for Erasmus+ school mobility: https://erasmus-plus.ec.europa.eu/bg/programme-guide/part-b/key-action-1/mobility-school

If you have any questions about the process, our team is more than happy to assist! Please find our contacts in the Contacts section of our website. https://rusalya.org/kontakti/