WE ALL ARE ALCHEMISTS !HOW TO TURN LEAD INTO GOLD

"We are alchemists. The world and Europe are opened to diversity, difference and innovation. This world has acquired a globalized space which shelters assemblages of inspirations, but also sometimes merciless confrontations with the weakest in Europe or the emerging countries of other continents. Facing these changes, each country frees itself from new areas of production and consumption, each society opens unknown territories and invests with codes, precepts and resolutions, each school is moving in an unprecedented mutation, to express professional but also citizen learnings in this new technological, economic, cultural and ethical environment. No one can reasonably live with conservative, bloodless and compartmentalized approaches. The changes that Europe and the planet are experiencing are in fact permeable to the educational processes in each of our countries.We all are alchemists, from Belgium, Spain, Italy, Latvia, Portugal, or France. Six partner schools around a common jewelry training which, by sharing their cultural and professional histories, have an obvious collective wealth, their own chemistry! Six schools in search of a new educational horizon. As we are convinced. The European diversities must in an opportune and salutary way, initiate crossbreeding and transformations like this alchemical metaphor, which aspires to change ""lead into gold"", a rough stone into a polished one, raw material into jewel, the blank page in writings, ignorance and bigotry in openness and tolerance...We all are alchemists, children of the European currency. Our collective project, through this partnership, will seek during two years in the diversity of our 6 schools to enrich each of them with this openness to cultures, heritage and stories of each. Four activity paths will forge each school year: (1) EXPLORATIONS / Collective expeditions in search of raw, alternative or heritage materials in his own country or in a partner’s one, (2) INTERBREEDING / Creations of jewelry that use the research of explorations by borrowing traditional, alternative or recycling techniques, (3) WRITINGS / Writing workshops able to transmit the experiences lived collectively during the project but also in a collaborative way to produce editions, catalogs and graphic plates, (4) EXHIBITIONS / Retrospectives of the jewels created during the year under the form of a real traveling exhibition across Europe in our 6 countries, scenography of transmission and spread of the project itself...We are alchemists, because through these expected results, the urgency in terms of impact is for our team to strengthen for all our students both the fundamental knowledge, the professional skills, the innovation and the creativity, but also citizen skills, without which learning would be futile and sterile. We are alchemists, because our path aims to be ethical in the daily life of the jeweler's profession, both on the respect of environmental standards and on working conditions in Europe and on the planet. Ethics, as a collective learning of rules to be built so as not to accept the unacceptable. The environmental challenges are immense. Populism and selfishness require everyone to assert a democratic conviction and to move towards civic commitments. What better field than school and European openness for this kind of learning!"