In our project 'Inclusion through Art and Media' (I AM) we cooperate with 6 European schools, from Spain (Sitges), Denmark (Maaloev),Hungary (Budapest), Iceland (Reykjavik), Germany (Achim) and The Netherlands (Huizen). With the priority in our project on Inclusion, a diversity of partners in North, South, East and West of Europe, will give it definitely a more powerful dimension. At all partner schools, staff and teachers are aware of the task we have as educators to not just transfer knowledge to pupils, but also offer them the tools to enhance their abilities for good citizenship. Inclusion is part of everyday (school) life and teachers as well as students and parents, experience new challenges every day. Looking at today’s situation in Europe and the world it becomes more and more obvious that the challenges will not end very soon, and therefore teachers and students need to be equipped with the necessary competences to meet and adequately deal with diversity. All partner schools have integrated 'Citizenship' in their school curriculum either through special classes or project weeks.During the project our goal is to develop and exchange new teaching materials to be used for this purpose. In other words, appealing teaching materials for youngsters when dealing with inclusion, in the widest sense of the word. Evaluations among pupils having been involved in former projects made clear, that different art forms were really appreciated and enjoyed as tools when working on specific topics. Art connects people and is inspiring to work and communicate actively on a joint product in an international setting. Not learning by the book but being creative while coping with important issues will have a lot more (long lasting) impact on youngsters from 14-17 years old. (VWO-level)Improving language skills is another important objective of our project. Our language of communication is English and with all the activities online and through physical exchanges all participants will be challenged to use English, written and spoken. In this intercultural setting ' the need to know ' will boost their language skills, together with their self- confidence in speaking a foreign language.Although the number of mobilities is maximized, we have decided to travel with 4-6 students and 1-2 teachers per country to each exchange meeting. Which means at every meeting around 25 foreign students and 5-10 teachers from abroad will be hosted, so many families will be taking part in the project as well. We do our utmost to increase the number of participants. Not just by raising the amount of mobilities but also through eTwinning activities for all, traveling or not.These activities and results will be put on TwinSpace so they are accessible to all participants (around 800 students and at least 40 teachers in two years). Apart from this number, some partners (Germany and Hungary)will also involve students from a special school (in their communities) for disabled students. These schools will also be involved during the exchange meeting in their town and through eTwinning. All partners will strive to involve pupils with a migration background or refugees in the project.During the two-year project, each country is responsible for the organization of an exchange meeting which will last 6 days including two travel days. Which means three each year, in November, January and March. Apart from the meeting, each country is also responsible for the development of teaching materials prior to the meeting and put them on TwinSpace so all participants can work on them and the whole project community can be in touch, working, comparing and discussing the outcome of these assignments. During the meeting results and experiences will be exchanged with those at home. After the meeting, evaluation and final results can be found on TwinSpace as well. Each country has decided on which specific field of Inclusion it will focus and what art form it will use in the process. Topics which we will work on vary from bullying, gender issues, refugees/immigrants and peers with a mental or physical disability. Art forms range from drama to painting, photography, videoing and sculpturing.Students will learn through workshops, organized by experts about different art forms and use of different media, challenging their creativity and thinking out of the box.With this project students will be involved in a one-year (and maybe for some even in a second year) lasting experience. The continuous interaction between peers from different nationalities and working with pupils with disabilities or those with a migration background or refugees will have a huge impact on our students. We expect to enhance a personal growth for all participants whether it be students, teachers or parents. Through dissemination of the project results, we also hope to create more tolerance, an open-mind and empathy in our wider (school) communities for those who seem different at first.

The project will be mostly focused on increasing among our school communities the awareness of how important science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) are in the 21st century, how they are connected to each other and other fields such as literature. Students, together with their teachers, will study what we already know about the planet Mars and follow ongoing research about the planet. There are many projects planning to send people on Mars in the next 10 to 20 years. It shows it is a very up-to-date topic and relevant to our students' life. They will carry out research on the possibilities of sending people to Mars and discuss technical difficulties and ethical questions as well. We will read literature pieces and watch films to discover how artists imagined life on Mars and compare them with each other and watch them from a scientific point of view to understand difference between fiction and reality. The background of this project is based on pedagogical experience which reveals that our students do not experience enough complex, real-life problems during their high school education and therefore find it difficult to connect different fields of science. The main topic of the project, human life on Mars, was chosen to meet the interest of the age group. Our students will be close to the end of their high school years during the project. Two schools will participate in the project, one from the Czech Republic and one from Hungary. From each school one class will take part in the mobility, but they will share their experiences with the school communities. Many of our students are interested in science and with this project we want to give them an opportunity to work on real life problems which is both interesting for them and relevant to the 21st century. Students will work in small groups on questions like how long does it take to get to Mars, what is the best time to travel, what are the effects of low/zero gravity and radiation to human, what can astronauts eat on Mars, how can we find water and so on. They are going to present their results in different forms, such as presentations, posters, computer programs or simulations, models or Lego robots. As the final product of the project, we plan to create a Mars theme escape room. To achieve extraordinary results in science and technology diversity is a very important factor. People from different countries are more likely to have different background knowledge and be creative in different ways. As most successful companies and research centres work at an international level, it is also very important for our project to be an international one to show our students how much they can learn from their partners. For the same reason it is also an essential part of our project to include girls in it to show that they can make a great contribution to a complex project by their possibly different point of view and skills. As we live in the European Union, it is very important to know each other's culture, so during our bilateral partnership we will present to each other some basic facts concerning our national traditions, culture, customs, city and region, language and school by presentations, films or displays . During students' meetings, students and teachers will visit some lessons in the hosting school in order to compare different ways of teaching. By collaborating students will also work on their social abilities in an international environment and it will widen their across-the-border view and by that, students will become more European. We will connect the cultural part of the project to our main topic, travelling to Mars. We will compare the food, tradition, landscape... etc students from the two countries would miss the most in case of moving to Mars. We also consider it to be important to improve foreign language and ICT competences of students and teachers. Since the project is based on the use of the English language, there is a great opportunity to improve English language skills not only for students but also for teachers and parents. By carrying out the project's tasks, participants will use different ICT devices and methods improving and strengthening digital skills and competences. Thanks to new technologies, participants will communicate with each other between project meetings via internet and fulfil different tasks using several kinds of digital devices. All in all, all the steps we plan to undertake will help us to develop in our students such skills and abilities which they might find very useful in their later professional and private life. The project will help our students to be more conscious about choosing their profession and find the university or college which suits them best. We wish to increase their interest in STEM fields in the long term and encourage girls to consider such professions. The project will also contribute to the long-term aim of the instutuions to widen their European experiences.