My Community 2020

My Community 2020 was developed to provide a contribution to addressing low digital skills and making an important contribution to local history and cultural heritage. The project addresses needs identified at national and European levels, the digital skills gap which requires to be bridged for a successful economy and the importance of valuing our cultural heritage The project brought together seven partners with relevant expertise in European Projects and training of adults facing disadvantage and barriers. Together we provided a cross-sector partnership, a transnational approach and desire to create a citizens perspective of life in their community in the year 2020. During project delivery we designed the course Digital Skills to Create Local History, with modules covering Storytelling, Local History, Interview Techniques, Local Media and recording / editing digital recordings with free software packages. We piloted with ten adult learners who face disadvantage and social isolation, engaging local citizens to act as mentors to support the learners created audio and video recording of stories of everyday life. Collectively we created over 80 short stories which through publishing on an online platform created the history of tomorrow today. The project improved the digital skills, self confidence and employability skills of adult learners, as well as providing an insight into active citizenship which they would be encouraged to continue as part of the project sustainability. The online platform short stories created a lasting legacy and contribution to cultural heritage and provided inspiration and stimulus to other localities in partner countries and across other European countries to use the project results to work with adults or young people to make their own contribution to feed into the platform. The project was led by Dacorum CVS (UK) and had partners in Bulgaria, France, Ireland, Italy, Latvia and Spain. In addition to the project linking into the European Year of Cultural Heritage, we had been pro-active in choosing partners in Bulgaria, Ireland and Italy to link into European Capital of Culture locations in 2019 and 2020.