"Crafting the Inclusion: Crafts and Practices in non-formal education for increasing social inclusion (CRAFT:IN) is a partnership focused on exchange of various crafts that will develop human resources within partner organisations, develop key competences of their staff, start new non-formal educational activities and entrepreneurship initiatives, and promote social inclusion of marginalised groups.CRAFT:IN consists of five partner organisations from Croatia, Germany, UK, Portugal, and Slovenia with transferable knowledge of a craft – one that their educators use in educational work with adults from various marginalised groups (refugees, Roma, people with disability, migrants…).Working with marginalised groups, partner organisations noticed that crafts can play a role in raising social inclusion, cultural awareness and mutual understanding between the dominant local culture and marginalised. Simply said, doing crafts, working with hands, sharing tools, methods, and owning their final products helps motivation, communication and mutual understanding.For the most part, crafts can be thought nonverbally (through practice) and, as such, are ideal for outreach campaigns and inter-cultural work even with communities who don’t speak the language. Crafts bring together people from various backgrounds (including marginalised groups) and promote interest in both “old” (local) and “new” (e.g. refugees) tradition, heritage, culture, skills, and design. As such, crafts help preserve the local culture, but also mirror the cultural diversity of peoples in Europe and can be platforms for intercultural exchange.However, positive effects are limited and quite vulnerable. To overcome this, activities should be continuous and explicitly established. They simply don’t occur spontaneously, as researchers Erasmus Universiteit in Rotterdam found in 2018. In other words, there has to be an agent that will facilitate inspiring craft programmes for marginalised groups, after which crafts show positive effects and harbour social inclusion and build “new”, mutual European cultural identity.For this reason, partner’s gathered in CRAFT:IN as they will gain knowledge of new crafts they can then introduce to their marginalised groups and develop new craft educational programmes of higher quality and international appeal. This will enable partners to develop their human resources and network further, their staff members to raise their EU Key Competences (multilingualism, cultural expression, entrepreneurship), and (with time) help heal social divide between the locals and marginalised groups.Each partner will host one independent Learning Teaching and Training (LTT) workshop where each host will, through methods of practical learning and non-formal education, share a craft they are masters of, and incite cultural exchange through practical experience and face-to-face participants’ interaction. Each workshop will end with an exhibition of products made at the workshop and/or public event where participants will promote inclusion, meet the locals, and discuss the role of crafts in developing inclusion at local level.In order to utilise newly gained knowledge and skills the most, partners will send two representatives to each workshop, to learn new skills and crafts. Upon their return, they will organise follow-up presentations (20 in total; 4 per partner) of the new skills and, where possible, start new inclusive programmes in the local community based on their new craft.To make their experiences tangible, partners will publish a Manual on various crafts we shared in effort to promote inclusion.In the background, back equally important, partners will host three Transnational Project Meetings (TPM) where managers will monitor project’s implementation, evaluate its past activities, and plan the future ones; including online campaigns for promotion and dissemination, and coordinating production of informal outputs.In total, 40 educational mobilises, 10-15 participants from marginalised groups, 3 project meetings, 1 online publication on inclusive crafts, 5 workshops and exhibitions/public discussions will be held. These activities will significantly increase partner organisations’ human resources, develop individual key competences, and promote crafts as means of inclusion and non-formal learning.In the long term, partner organisations see this partnership as a ""stepping stone"" - the first of many that will follow and lead to a sustainable and open European platform for inclusive crafts and social entrepreneurship.. Partners are committed to building this platform that will help preserve, develop and promote crafts for social inclusion."

"Educathe+ Expander (E+EX) builds on successful Grundtvig workshop Educathe (2013) and Educathe+ KA2 Strategic Partnership (2015-2017) - and expands on them geographically and in practice.Similar to its predecessors, E+EX brings together new organisations that use educational theatre (ET) practices in working with/for people with disability (PWD). This time we expand to organisations who work with women or immigrants, teach them to use ET, and learn from them as the “control group” (for measuring the success of our practices). Thus, the “Educathe movement” develops its network and database of good practices, and increases the popularity of ET in non-formal education and disability social work.In E+EX, partners come together to share and document their existing ET practices and develop new ones; enhance visibility of PWD and their skills in the society and in the labour market; empower, and develop Key competences of all those involved (PWD, assistants, theatre educators).We will reach those objectives through Drama-Action Model (DAM), the basic methodological framework developed by sociologist dr.sc. Hromatko and used in all “Educathe movement” activities. DAM is a comprehensive public sociology framework that introduces and combines practices and educational benefits of performative arts (especially ET) with those of empirical interdisciplinary research and non-formal education – in order to achieve inclusive, holistic, sustainable and empirically based social change. It has been scientifically tested and proven in local (2009, 2011-2012, 2016-2017) and international context (2013, 2015-2017, 2018-2020) as especially suitable tool in educational work with socially stigmatised groups of all kind, including PWD. In short, DAM framework has been proven to be open, proactive, inclusive and sustainable because it is built as a holistic interdisciplinary framework of sociology of knowledge and social construction of reality theory by Berger & Luckmann, dramaturgical perspective by Goffman, theatre/modern version of rite of passage by Turner, and action research by Lewin.DAM educational journey always includes all sides of a social issue (in this case, PWD /those who work with them/ general society) and then combines ET with action research and non-formal education in order to end with a joint public performance and debate between the performers and the audience (society). Besides empowering performers, DAM helps develop new group identity, raise visibility of E+EX activities, disseminate its results, and incite debates and positive social changes (with regard to PWD employability and labour market). By using DAM, partners will have the basic framework which they will fill with their own knowledge that will in turn help improve drama-action model and develop its range of methods and practices. In total of 25 days of 5 international ET workshops, partners will conduct 60 mobilities (in equal numbers: 20 by PWD, 20 by their assistants, and 20 by educators). Participants will work together and share/innovate practices and develop 5 public performances that they will perform together in order to present inclusion, disseminate E+EX results, and raise public awareness of discrimination of PWD in the labour market - all the while developing participants EU Key Competences (""soft-skills”). Performances will end with 5 public debates between performers, organisers, media, and the audience. As such, E+EX performances will become meeting places where PWD and the rest of the society will interact in a public debate focused on problem solving and promotion of EU positive role in prevention of discrimination of PWD in the labour market.To increase our impact and dissemination potential, our performances will be live-streamed, recorded, and disseminated online via partners websites, social media, Educathe's and educators’ existing networks. Besides audio-visual coverage, partners will take care to produce educational materials from each of partnership’s events.Therefore, E+EX activities will produce (or further develop) tangible educational outputs: free web platform (E+ Toolbox repository with examples of good practices), E+ Manual (5); and E+ educational videos (5). The outputs of our partnership will be developed equally by all partners and will include practices, experiences, and methodologies that partners have brought into the project as their own contribution. In that way, partners will contribute to Educathe free database of ET practices for employability of PWD.Finally, E+EX is a long-term commitment that has been established on the needs of PWD, those working with them, and EU policy. Namely, this partnership responds to the EU strategy in disability policy stated in ""European Disability Strategy 2010-2020: A Renewed Commitment to a Barrier-Free Europe"" and helps remove social and labour market barriers for PWD by producing educational and cultural impact through public performance"