Safeguarding intangible cultural heritage through transformative learning within community-based art

<< Background >>Our motivation was to safeguard intangible cultural heritage and provide teachers with new skills and opportunities to grow social capital in their own communities, to highlight traditions and to sustain them for individuals and communities. Demographic changes, the need for autonomy and the power of mass media pose a threat to intangible cultural heritage. In many communities, there is a lack of young people who are interested in embracing the traditions of previous generations. Intangible cultural heritage is important for experiences, thoughts, feelings and assumptions about identity, culture and cultural diversity, so that heritage remains alive, vibrant and meaningful. Intangible cultural heritage is also related to the environment, social and economic realities. The partners have noticed, while working with their stakeholders, that people are poorly aware of the traditions and customs of their local environment. They have noted that many rich elements of Cultural Heritage that could really improve inclusion are in danger of disappearing. The art field works with intangible heritage, but the challenge is to transmit knowledge to new generations. For that, we wanted to create new tools.<< Objectives >>Our main objective was to create new tools for art educators, for working with heritage topics, for using digital technologies, and for leading a transformative learning process. As the concrete result we wanted to create a digital toolkit that highlights various aspects of these three overlapping working areas, and models ways of working with intangible cultural heritage in a communal art setting. In creating the digital toolkit, we wanted to explore the use of the latest video recording and viewing equipment in order to provide the educators with new competences, to make the content for the digital toolkit as engaging as possible, and to digitalise elements of intangible cultural heritage for posterity. Through the pilot group work process, we aimed to develope and test a new way of engaging with cultural heritage through the use of communal art education methods, underpinned by the principles of transformative learning. We also wanted to explore the use and meaning of dialogue within a transformative, art-based learning process. << Implementation >>The project partners created a common vision of the project output and formulated steps and guidelines to achieve it. Each partner implemented their own community arts education process in an ICH area of their choice. The pilots produced videos, photographs, interviews and surveys, methods and exercises. This material was used to jointly build an online digital toolkit. The partners had four project meetings. The first one was to build a common vision of the project, the second one - a workshop - to familiarize partners and facilitators with the themes and to plan national pilots. The third and fourth meetings were to design and build the toolkit and dissemination activities. The partners implemented a joint international online dissemination event. Each partner implemented national dissemination events. The role of the Citizens’ Forum was to coordinate and lead the processes. Oideas Gael took care of the creation and maintenance of the project website and social media channels. Blue Beehive provided internal evaluation throughout the project. UEF and Asociatia Perseidele were primarily responsible for the theoretical framewor of intangible cultural heritage and transformal learning. << Results >>Each project partner implemented their own national pilot group, which produced a huge amount of different material. The material was compiled into a common digital toolkit for educators, community groups and anyone working in the heritage or community art fields. The toolkit contains information and resources for incorporating intangible cultural heritage into educational practices and creating innovative learning experiences for both learners and teachers. It has four different themes; Explore intangible cultural heritage, Find pedagogical tools for teaching heritage, Use technology and Create transformative learning. Each theme includes their definition, pedagogical reflection and a large number of exercises illustrated in text, images and videos. The project has its own website, where the main themes of the project, intangible cultural heritage, community arts education and transformative learning, are presented in the form of blogs and articles. The project also has Facebook and Instagram accounts, where each partner has produced a large number of images, videos and texts during the project; about the activities of pilot groups, project meetings and dissemination events.