CITIES WITH STORIES – A bridge between cultures
A bridge between cultures, “Cities With Stories” opens the dialogue between Turkey and Europe (TR2016/DG/03/A2-03EuropeAid/167523/ID/ACT/TR). The project aims to strengthen this dialogue via the children’ storytelling about concrete and intangible cultural heritage. Both children will be able to understand and tell our cultural heritage with their own words and creativity, they will be encouraged to learn history from each other.
Indeed, the initiative focuses on improving children’s historical knowledge, enabling them to act with the consciousness of historic preservation. To give them the tools to create their own historical tales, the planned activities included 50 h pilot workshops with more than a hundred students (11-15) based on the developed curriculum. Thanks to the active participation of the I.C.S. “Monsignor Gagliano” (PA) and the Scuola Media Statale “Antonio Gramsci”, we managed to implement 4-day activities designed to show, explain, do and learn what the project is about, how to realise stories through storytelling techniques, and how to value the cultural heritage that belongs to our history:
- Day 1 – Project presentation; creative ice breaking exercise to create a story starting from an important object or memory; short story examples of different type.
- Day 2 – Exercises revision, doubts, and feelings; types of storytelling structure explanation with video examples; Palermo cultural heritage focus; creative exercise on designing characters and contexts supported by a template.
- Day 3 – Exercises revision, doubts, and feelings; how to record a story (e.g., video, audiobook, easy animations); creative exercise on building a story from the characters and contexts previously designed.
- Day 4 – Exercises revision, doubts, and feelings; final assembling; next steps (celebration and award) and trip to Istanbul.
What it has been just described is part of the third project activity output of realizing historical storytelling trainings. Due to covid-19 emergency, all activities have been held online; nonetheless, the mixed experiential active learning approach kept a high interest and proactive participation from the students.
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