"In which world do we want to live? This question takes on a whole new significance in view of current social developments. In the course of the COVID-19 pandemic, human contact has suffered in particular. Disorientation, fear of the future, loss of trust, self-doubt and loneliness are damaging the social cohesion and make people vulnerable to frustration, fear, hatred and violence.This also defines requirements for a ""new"" adult education which restarts communication in the social space and enables people to become active themselves.This is where the ""EduArt"" project comes in. Adult educators and cultural workers from four EU countries are establishing partnerships for creativity and jointly developing learning opportunities for adult education with cultural and creative components. In the sense of active citizenship, the learning arrangements promote joint learning – regardless of age, gender, social and cultural background – and thus combine individual competence acquisition with the strengthening of social cohesion.The aim of our project is the ""Development of competences of people living in the neighbourhood to strengthen social cohesion in the social space"". Participants are on the one hand the adults in the neighbourhood (1500), who are to benefit from the new learning opportunities, and on the other hand the actors – adult education institutions, artists and cultural workers (200), as well as supporters from education, culture, civil society, business (200) and political decision-makers (60). Creativity and art is the glue that brings together the different groups of the neighbourhood for learning. The COVID-19 pandemic and its best-known symbol – the mask – provide the theme.In four neighbourhoods in Berlin, Vicenza, Linz and Warsaw we are forming four tandems of education and art – GFBM Academy and KulturMarktHalle (Germany), Eurocultura and Engim Veneto (Italy), ATJ Lingwista and Fundacja PASJE (Poland) and Südwind and Lilarum (Austria), with BGZ taking the lead. The nine partners are developing – with the participation of the neighbourhood residents – experimental courses on artistic expression (acting, puppet theatre and painting) around the topic of masks and masking. The participants will deal with issues such as appreciative communication, tolerance and participation. At the same time, the tandems initiate an ongoing dialogue with the other actors in the neighbourhood and discuss what form social-space-oriented educational work should take in order to reach all people in the neighbourhood. They elaborate an interactive handbook for cooperation between actors from adult education and from the art/creative scene in the context of creative partnerships and for the design of social-space-oriented educational offers. Further, the partnership develops a model for ""neighbourhood moderators"" – with concepts for working with neighbourhood moderators and a training course. The approach will be tested in the four neighbourhoods. Finally, the ideas collected in the course of the project on the further development of effective adult education and the framework conditions required for this are incorporated into the recommendations for political decision-makers.The main result of ""EduArt"" is a transferable model for social-space and resource-oriented adult education using cultural and artistic means - with positive effects on users, actors, institutions and systems. The participating adults develop shaping competences that enable them to actively participate in the neighbourhood. The educational actors and cultural workers expand their competences for social-space-related educational work with heterogeneous target groups, for inclusion, but also for working with digital media. The educational and cultural institutions position themselves as providers of attractive learning offers in the neighbourhood, sharpen their profile and portfolio of offers with new topics, forms of learning and learning approaches, and increasingly use international cooperation. And ""EduArt"" is also influencing the system level and contributing to the political discourse on the future of adult education.The long-term benefit is a political benefit (greater social cohesion), a social benefit (increased participation) and an economic benefit (improved organisational competences, resilience of the population and a strengthened cultural scene)."

"Democracy and respect for human rights are the common values that form the rule of law and the self-image of the European Union. However, authoritarian or totalitarian tendencies have become increasingly noticeable again in Europe in recent years. In many countries, governments are taking steps that could undermine universal human rights and democracy in the medium term.The project ""Democracy & Puppetry"" enables young European citizens between the ages of 13 and 16 to deal with the issues of democracy and human rights in a creative way. They learn in the course of the project and are able to explore their social environment. In this way, they can gain important insights into the topics of democracy and human rights and their significance for freedom and equality.The participating students are taught basic knowledge on the topics of democracy and human rights in workshops as part of the regular lessons at school. In the further course of the program, they will examine their personal environment against this background and that of their national and regional realities in ""Action Researches"". They will transform the insights gained from this into short puppet theater performances, which they will then perform in public, urban buildings in front of their families, the peer group, politicians and other interested citizens. In this way, they bring their thoughts and wishes regarding the topics of democracy and human rights directly to the authorities in their home country and enable the audience, which is actively involved in the event, to see places that might have negative connotations (e.g. due to migration backgrounds) from a different perspective. In doing so, the artistic methods of puppet theater help them to express controversy, to get to the heart of what is difficult to say and to bring relationships into completely new relations. Five to ten school classes participate in the project. The young people are accompanied by their teachers and by figure theater artists. The methods used in the thematic work with the young people will be taught to the participating teachers and artists by ""Zentrum polis - Politik Lernen in der Schule"", with the final development taking place together with the participants. For this purpose, a workshop will be held in Vienna for several days, with representatives of all participating partners from four countries: The project takes place simultaneously in Budapest, Belgrade, Ravne na Koroskem and Vienna.Students, teachers, artists and also the indirectly involved participants, for example the visitors of the performances as well as the numerous contacts who come into contact with the project via social media, will be sensitized more or less lastingly to the topics of democracy and human rights through ""Democracy & Puppetry"". Thanks to the broad mix of participating schools, students from weaker social, ""culturally distant"" strata are reached as well as from ""good families"". This contributes to the universal applicability of the final methods.The teaching methods developed in the course of the project will be made available free of charge for further use after the end of the project. They are shared via the networks of participating teachers, artists, students and theaters and are thus widely distributed. A wide-ranging PR strategy developed by the team contributes to the greatest possible international dissemination.The goals of the project are on the one hand to promote understanding of the importance of democracy and human rights for the maintenance of peace and cohesion in the European Union, and on the other hand to develop and make available free of charge reproducible methods of democracy and human rights education for teachers, youth workers, artists and interested parties throughout Europe. The project sees itself as a contribution to ""Global and European Citizenship Education"". Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)"