The success story of ouRoute project

03 Oct The success story of ouRoute project

Now that the ouRoute project reached its end, it is time to assess its impact, collecting feedback from the project partners. It was a 3-year journey that reunited the efforts of 11 partners and 1 associated partner from 4 European countries (Portugal, Spain, Italy and Poland). All partners considered ouRoute a success story and here we present some of their own words:

* ouRoute works with teenagers from disadvantaged contexts, the ones that living in an ever more globalized world, who take no notice or importance of their cultural heritage, while actually, they need to know it and value it.

* A project with young people discovering the intangible heritage of the country brought different ways of understanding how these arts and knowledge can be disseminated.

* ouRoute connects the arts & crafts sector with the students. ouRoute activities encourage them, and involve them in the project, creating an elevated interest to learn more.

* ouRoute is a good and solid way to promote ancient professions that are being lost, so that new people may be interested to learn from them and preserve them.

* It is a way to promote our cultural heritage and our municipalities.

* The links, and networks that are being created and will remain.

* The new skills that the students will obtain, make them more committed to their municipality, more willing to take part in activities, and at the end more active citizens.

* For senior citizens with a lot of knowledge about our cultural heritage, this project has been really valuable, as they have been really happy of getting the opportunity of sharing their knowledge, which if not passed from generation to the following it will be lost. They have taken part in many different ways: focus groups, recipes tasting in the cultural heritage week, round table in the multiplier event, showing the ancient inn (an old building in hands of the heirs) …

* Synergies with other projects were made

* This project made it possible to work on the student’s perception of the concept of cultural heritage so that they understood that each manifestation has its peculiarity and importance and that cultural heritage cannot be restricted to tangible assets nationally or internationally recognised;

* This project promoted collective work enabling the interaction between different generations, namely regarding the direct contact with the students of IES Felipe Borbon and ISS Alessandro Volta, but also the involvement of the family members themselves and different elements of the community, namely the local cultural agents;

* Working with new methodologies for the approach of Cultural Heritage in a school context also allowed to raise the awareness of the school for its role in heritage preservation by instilling in students the responsibility that they are part of society and the duty to be aware of their obligations as citizens;

* The students enrolled in the project have gained motivation, increased their English level, learnt a lot about how to record and edit videos, learnt about their cultural heritage, and increased their communication skills because of taking part in focus groups, taking in public…;

* The constructivist approach carried out by the project and concerning the educational field, has also made it possible to strengthen cooperation with local schools and the local municipality, to develop new strategies and synergies and so to involve students in the promotion of local cultural heritage;

* The ouRoute project represented a great opportunity to exchange good practices and experiences, also through the participation in the Citizen Cultural Heritage Weeks. The latter gave the chance to capitalise on the efforts made by the Consortium throughout the project and at the same time raise awareness among young people 

of the importance of promoting knowledge, intercultural dialogue, and respect for ethnic, linguistic, and cultural diversity;

* It is very important as researchers to connect with schools and design materials that are useful to them. Educational innovation must promote collaboration between different agents;

* Knowing other European contexts allows the University of Murcia to improve its internationalization process. The connection with other partners is essential to create real collaboration synergies. The challenges posed since ouRoute and the difficulties posed by the pandemic have put all partners to the test. 

Our ability to cooperate has benefited from these difficulties;

* It has allowed us to work with other agents who are not students and teachers. Working with the local authorities has been a very valuable experience since they give us another point of view.

And this success story continues, through the capacitated generation of ouRouters that can now transmit their knowledge to a new generation… Besides, the project’s resources are freely available on the project’s website here.

To find out more information about this project, check out our website and social media!

For more information, please contact Pedro Costa ([email protected]), Cláudia Dias ([email protected]), or Daniel Pina ([email protected]).

Consortium: INOVA+, Casa do Professor, Câmara Municipal de Braga, Filmesdamente (Portugal), CESIE, Istituto Istruzione Secondaria Superiore Alessandro Volta, Comune di Palermo (Itália), Universidad de Murcia, Felipe de Bordon, Ayuntamento de Ceutí (Espanha); INnCREASE (Polónia).