School full of Heritage
An international and collaborative journey
in the framework of the Creative FLIP Project.
The Creative FLIP Project is an action, co-funded by the European Commission and project partners:
- Goethe-Institut (lead partner)
- European Creative Hubs Network
- IDEA Consult
- 3s Unternehmensberatun
- Intellectual Property Institute Luxembourg
The action aims to cultivate creativity and develop a range of skills related to the cultural and creative sector. These skills are considered crucial for the future labour market, yet they are still insufficiently integrated into school curricula. Therefore, during the European Year of Youth 2022, Creative FLIP supported the second phase of the Learning Labs programme (2022-2023 – Pilot phase: 2019-2021), focusing on the key areas of Finance, Learning, Innovation and Intellectual Property Rights in the cultural and creative sector.
The Learning Labs programme supports 15 European organisations from the Cultural and Creative Sector to develop collaborative projects with schools, introducing students to creative professions and building ties with their local communities.
As part of this initiative, we collaborated with the 1st Primary School of Vrilissia. More specifically, the students of the 6th grade attended a series of 10 workshops (October 2022 – March 2023), designed and facilitated by our team, with the aim of co-creating a School full of heritage.
Greece is a country that, thanks to its rich cultural heritage, has developed significant expertise in research and promotion. The path from excavation to display is what most people imagine as the everyday work of an archaeologist. However, this represents only one aspect of the reality, as completing this process requires the contribution of many cultural professionals. Through our programme, students are introduced to all the cultural and creative professions involved in this journey. They become familiar with the tools, methods, and demands of each phase -from excavation to exhibition- and engage in a hands-on, interactive learning experience.
The central theme of all the workshops and the final exhibition was the “game”. No matter how many years go by, playing remains an essential part of daily life for children and adults alike. Since antiquity, the pedagogical value of games have been recognised as key to healthy physical, intellectual and social development. Many of the games known since ancient times, remind us of games we still play today.
Thus, during the workshops, the children searched for ancient toys within the National Archaeological Museum, discovered many of them through an excavation simulation, and gained hands-on experience with the sciences of conservation, research, and documentation. Then, they moved on to museum studies and exhibition design, including the development of the visual identity of the exhibition. Finally, they learnt traditional and technology-enhanced tour-guiding techniques, and curated the overall organisation of the opening and operation of the exhibition, entitled Let’s Play!
