SPAR, 2016 - 2018

A two year Erasmus+ strategic partnerships, entitled “Develop curricula and training programmes for culture volunteers”(SPAR) supported by the Erasmus+ programme.

BACKGROUND

During the last years, we have seen more political and public interest for reviving the rural and sparsely populated areas and to counter the current migration from rural to urban areas.

One of more ways to counter this trend is to provide more available and involving arts and culture activities with added community values. To secure cultural sustainability in these areas, we need to strengthen the “citizen help citizen" or "peer to peer approach", where civil society associations from the cross-cultural sector of amateur arts, voluntary culture, and heritage are engaged.

AIM AND OBJECTIVES

The overall aim is to improve the competences of the voluntary associations and their volunteers to provide enlivening arts and culture opportunities in the sparsely populated communities with an added value for civic and democratic participation, community bonding and local identity.

OUTLINE OF ACTIVITIES

The innovative dimension of this project is its integrated adult education approach, where we will:

1. Complete local field surveys of the current competence profiles of culture volunteering to get a baseline as well as state of the art examples for the succeeding development work;
2. Develop an integrated curricula for culture volunteers as well as culture managers to provide enlivening cross-culture activities with added community values.
3. To design and test a series of national pilot courses for culture volunteers and managers in the varied contexts of the partner countries.
4. To design and test new Erasmus+ pilot courses for culture volunteers as well as culture managers with the aim to offer sustainable Erasmus+ training events as well as high quality national courses after the end of the project.
5. To provide a Communication Portal with desk research and other supporting information about the issues of the project as well as presentations of the project’s pilot work and outputs to the virtual audiences.

THE PARNERSHIP CIRCLE

includes

• Two national umbrellas for voluntary culture: Voluntary Arts Network in United Kingdom and Cultural Councils in Denmark;
• One national association for liberal adult education: The Hungarian Folk High School Society;
• Two organisations from the liberal adult education and NGO work, with expertise in field research and curricula planning: Foundation of Alternative Educational Initiatives in Poland, and Interfolk, institute for Civil Society from Denmark;
• One public body, the Municipality of Lousada, Portugal.

For more infomration - see the website of the SPAR project here: www.sparproject.eu