http://www.erasmusk2pics.org/d2/index.php    

The Erasmus Impact Study (Sept 2014) confirms EU student exchange scheme boosts employability and job mobility and 92% employers are looking for transversal skills, such as curiosity and problem solving. It also shows that people with international experience fare much better on the job market. Under the circumstances, we think that Photography can Increase Creative-thinking Skills (PICS) and promote job opportunities. We want to use it as a means to involve adult learners in a European partnership.

          Digital cameras are electronic devices that digitize images. The majority of people today have their own cell, smart phones or cameras and use photobooks, apps and social networks. The focus with this project is to provide information on digital cameras and how they can be integrated into the non-formal educational process of learners. Photos may be used in many different types of classroom lessons. What is the difference between taking a picture and making a photograph? What do you need to begin working as a photographer or to become simply a hobbyst? The project will help learners to understand how to change, edit and manipulate images. The project will give emphasis both to culture and entrepreneurship (Reccomendation March 2014 EU Youth Conference), dealing with photography as an educational tool, a cultural tool and a working skill for job improvements.

Photography as a research tool has been under-appreciated and marginally used in the field of education. In particular, two techniques, Auto-Photography and  Photo-Elicitation can be used. Auto-Photography is a form of research practice in the area of identity and self-esteem. In auto-photography participants take photographs, choosing images and representations of themselves. While the main purpose of Photo-Elicitation Interviewing (PEI) is analyzing how subjects respond to images, attributing social and personal meanings and values. They are important tools for building bridges with marginalized groups, since they offer teachers a way to let learners speak for themselves or express hidden emotions and personal opinions.
Photography as a cultural/anthropological tool is based on the underlying premise that photographs are visual transcriptions of reality, which appear to contain fact, evidence and truth. Photography is a reliable means of storing, ordering, and interpreting visual information. The primary applications of anthropological photography demonstrate patterns in cultural diversity (societal control, religious behavior, marriage customs, festivals). Through pics photographers freeze a moment in life and people looking at them read a chapter of human history. The project wants to offer learners, migrants and residents, the opportunity to select, collect and study photos to express their national identity, culture and history and to show them to the other countries' peers in order to find similarities and differences.
Photography as a working skill has various possibilities: photographers can work as portrait, scientific, fine arts, freelance, commercial photographers, etc... Photographer employment rates are projected to grow along the occupational average over the next eight years (Boureau of Labour Statistics, USA). Employers want people with strong imagination and technical skills in photography. Against this background, the project wants to offer amateurs the chance to get easy access to techniques and domain expertise, benefitting from national and foreign experts, especially during mobilities and the multiplier event.

          The project will address a wide range of young and adult people (mainly 20-40 years old): school drop-outs, early school leavers, disaffected people or other people at risk (so called NEETs-Not in Employment, in Education, in Training), as well as foreign students. Many European countries are facing the new or growing arrival of legal migrants and also illegal ones, asylum seekers and refugees, nowadays tragically escaping from Africa or Asia.

          We think that only a transnational effort can offer solutions to the issue faced by modern societies: reducing disparities in learning outcomes affecting learners from disadvantaged and migrant backgrounds, providing them with basic and transversal skills.

          The seminar “Tackling EUROPE 2020 Target” has underlined the need to encourage cooperation among schools in order to explore the idea of “Community Schools”. As community schools/organizations we want to investigate about different approaches to this issue, discuss and analyse their strengths and weaknesses, develop successful systems and enable timely actions, and participate in actions aimed at achieving a sustainable future.

          Partners will be engaged in local and transnational activities, cross-national workshops, events, exhibitions which will let vulnerable learners who have few or no chances to access a European learning environment, to travel, meet and work together, becoming more secure "European Citizens".

Technology is changing our lives and the products we use at an alarming rate: computers, smartphones and global communication have shaped and educated us. Europeans are participating in the creation of an online universe (The European Youth Event May 2014 Strasbourg). Europe 2020 Strategy underlines that, strengthening knowledge and 2.0 innovation as drivers of our future growth, requires improving the quality of our education. With advancing technology, there is a continuing need to educate and re-educate and there is a critical need for individuals with creativity, innovation and higher-level conceptual e-skills (Grand Coalition for Digital Jobs launched by the EU Commission). The project PICS wants to accept this educational challenge performing problem solving strategies (problem based learning - PBL), that in technology-rich environments is defined as the ability to use digital technology, communication tools and networks to acquire and evaluate information, communicate with others and perform practical tasks. This project will illustrate photography's potential to help students acquire new technological and critical-thinking skills. 

The project ideally and practically continues a previous Grundtvig project 2012 named FILM (Facilitate Informal Learning through Movies), involving two partners (the Italian and the Romanian staff working in other schools before), aimed at fostering informal education through cinema. PICS exploits the same concept of FILM, the democratic quality of images: regardless of one’s language, level of literacy, or nationality, images can be enjoyed by everyone, at a non-conscious level, and can be important pedagogical tools for teaching global studies in a non-formal way. This new project will deepen the analysis of image editing, focusing the attention on the stillness of the image instead of the artistic mixture of images, sounds and motion techniques of the cinema. Photos can be the best means to access a wide range of target students and especially those who lack (for language or cultural barriers, migrants and other disadvantaged groups) basic literacy and can’t express themselves easily.
The two projects FILM and PICS tend to be concerned with photography and documentary filmmaking within a sociological context. The coordinating school together with some of the previous project partners will deal with visual sociology, that includes the study of all kinds of visual material and the visual social world, and will use all kinds of visual material in its methodologies in adult education. Photos tell human stories and tell a country's history. Photos can be used to know and show the stories of natives and migrants, approaching them with the two techniques of Auto-Photography and Photo-Elicitation.
Moreover both projects stress the importance of a non-formal approach which gives priority to what an individual actually knows and/or is able to do or needs to know. This learner-centered approach transforms the traditional teacher in a modern facilitator, whose task is to "facilitate" the process of acquisition of skills and competencies. Facilitation is centered on learners by enabling them to creatively explore their own directions. 
Many civic skills are involved in the project, as well as in other previous projects carried out by all the partners, in working for a sustainable future (Citizenship Education-Unesco):
-A willingness to investigate issues in the local and wider community.
-A readiness to recognise social, economic and political dimensions of issues needed to resolve them.
-The ability to analyse issues and to participate in action aimed at achieving a sustainable future.

What is new for the organizations involved is the massive presence of new migrants, refugees and asylum seekers as target groups of the project. Until recently the mainstream saw migration, for the most part, as positive. Migrants created growth and undertook jobs nationals no longer wanted to do, they didn’t normally attend adult education classes.
Seven years of economic crisis in Europe have changed the situation. Migrants are exposed to levels of unemployment, poverty and social exclusion up to twice as high as those of natives. Moreover, refugee crises rage around the edge of Europe. Some countries face this critical situation for the first time (Turkey). Other countries have a long experience in dealing with migrants (UK and Germany e.g.). All countries need to to find strategies to facilitate their integration.
Only a transnational project, where free access to education, infrastructures, the right level of digital skills, and the right organisational strategies are secured, can generate an educational offer able to sustain those learners at risk.

Project Partners:

CENTRO PROVINCIALE ISTRUZIONE ADULTI (ITALIA)

ASOCIATIA EUROEDUAS (ROMANIA)

SOMATEIO FILOI TOU KENTROU PERIVALLONTIKHS ENHMERWSHS KAI THS PERIVALLONTIKHS ANAPTYKSHS EPISKOPHS PAFOU (CYPRUS)

EKPOL- ETAIREIA KOINONIKIS PAREMVASIS KAI POLITISMOU-PERIFEREIA THESSALIAS (GREECE)

ARYP CIC (UNITED KINGDOM)

STADTISCHE BERUFSSCHULE II REGENSBURG (GERMANY)

PETROENSINO, ENSINO E FORMAÇÃO PROFISSIONAL (PORTUGAL)

MURATPASA VOCATIONAL TRAINING CENTER ANTALYA (TURKEY)