"<< Background >>The need to test new ways of helping school children and teachers to develop key competences is widely recognised by education policy makers and international institutions like the EU, OECD, UNESCO and the Council of Europe. The recent Conferences on ""Supporting key competences development"" (Brussels, 12-13 November 2019), ""Fusion Cities"" (London, 9th October 2020) and the presentation of the OECD Education 2030 Framework are examples of the consensus reached, at the policy and expert levels, on the need to change traditional teaching methods if transversal key competences are given the adequate importance. Not always this need is clearly perceived at the grassroots level, where discipline-based curricula and strict timetables tend to dominate the school routines. When schools, teachers, parents and students perceive the need of changing learning strategies and putting transversal key competences at the heart of teaching and on the front line of learning objectives, a promising process can start. This project is based on the awareness of needs at the whole school level in the partner schools and the support of specialised partners and networks that will make the project feasible and sustainable. Target groups addressed are students of lower and upper secondary schools who will be directly involved in the conception and development of cultural products, teachers of different disciplines (history, art, music, languages, digital technology, science and environment, etc.) who will constitute the project team in the partner schools and parents who will be invited to encourage and support their children in an innovative transnational learning experience which is aimed at developing a rich set of key competences for further studies, but also for life and active citizenship. The Project has the ambition to propose and experiment a holistic method to develop key transversal competences (cultural awareness and expression, citizenship, multilingual, digital, entrepreneurship, personal, social and learning) through a transnational experience of developing a cultural product (a piece of theatre, a musical, an exhibition including students' performance, a multimedia work, etc.) including historic research, literature and art history, music, performing arts and digital skills. Starting from the analysis and reconstruction of the life and works of local celebrities, or historical episodes connected to local history, secondary schools of different countries will collaborate in the development of parallel cultural products, learning from one another and being supported by families engagement and some specialised partners that will respectively help develop the performing arts and the intercultural and democratic citizenship skills. Each of the chosen histories will be presented to each other school to allow the understanding of the history of other countries and adding a different perspective to the discovery of European cultural heritage. The PERFECT partnership strongly believes that such an approach has the potential to lead to a deeper understanding of each other's heritage and history, thus supporting the achievement of what the EU Ministers of Education have called for in the 2015 Paris Declaration on Promoting citizenship and the common values of freedom, tolerance and non-discrimination through education. Building on the mutual knowledge of local history is a simple but effective way to recognise commonalities and relationships between European peoples, and to value the achievements of the European Union in terms of peace, mutual respect and joint development towards a common future. This is in line with the required actions towards achieving the goals of the European Education Area, especially in the field of common European values.<< Objectives >>The PERFECT project aims at contributing to the innovation and quality of secondary education by developing and testing a teaching/learning strategy based on collaborative cultural production and intercultural exchange also through a meaningful, stimulating and interactive use of digital technology.The identified concrete objectives of PERFECT are:1) To stimulate and support the development of autonomous learning and basic research skills, creative thinking, collaborative attitudes and skills through the creation of cultural products based on local history;2) To organise and reward digitally-enhanced international collaboration of partner schools by supporting the exchange of good practice and cultural products originated locally by students' groups, interacting among them through digitally supported project work;3) To develop a review of the experiences conducted and produce a set of methodological instruments to support the replicability and dissemination of the PERFECT ""open model"" of action;4) To set up and promote a network of primary and secondary schools committed to participate in exchange of cultural products developed by their students and in a European Festival.The project is developed through a transnational partnership in order to properly develop the following features:- Cultural exchange: collaboration between schools of different countries allows pupils and teachers to share and learn about different experiences in diverse sectors. This leads to the identification of similarities, differences and new inputs and outputs;- Didactical innovation: by sharing experiences, teachers and, more in general, schools, can get to know innovative ways of teaching/learning and can therefore put them into practice in their local realities.- Openness to multiculturality: through cultural exchange, teachers and students have the opportunity to find out about other people's traditions and cultures, which can lead to feelings of cultural respect and understanding of other countries' cultural heritage.All these elements will contribute to the promotion of Global Citizenship Education principles, European history and cultural heritage and represent important assets to understand and adhere to a vision of Europe and the world as interconnected systems with commonalities and differences worth to be explored and understood.<< Implementation >>The project's central idea is to propose a learning innovation approach through which schools from different countries together develop a project-based method for the development of a cultural product. Teachers of different disciplines will concur to the design and development of these projects/products involving two classes in each partner school. Therefore the core set of activities will be implemented within, around and between the partner schools with the methodological and management support of the other partners (European Networks like FREREF, OBESSU, IPA, the IIHL with its hosted Education Inspiring Peace Lab, the Ministry of Education of Malta). The work programme is shaped around partners’ structured path to develop and experiment the approach to transversal competences through cross-cultural cooperation. The activities of the project will include:- Active participation and involvement of students (and teachers) belonging to two classes for each of the five schools participating in the project in the elaboration of a cultural product: school teams (teachers and students) will identify and study the life and works of a local character or a historical episode related to the local history (PR3). Through this activity, students will be stimulated to develop autonomous learning and researching skills, as well as creative thinking and teamwork. - Transnational collaboration and cultural exchange will take place between teachers during the whole project and will be enhanced through activities such as a three-day teachers’ training (LTTA) taking place in Italy, which will allow representatives of the partner schools teams to share their experiences and suggestions concerning the learning innovations to be associated to the development of cultural products, jointly preparing the design principles for the learning experiences to be developed in and among partner schools. They will collaborate in designing common features that the cultural projects and outcomes will share, to make them part of a coherent result, developed in different parts of Europe. - The five Transnational Project Meetings (including the Kick-off and the final meeting) taking place in Italy, Romania, Austria, Malta and Belgium will represent an opportunity for all project partners to co-create every final product and to share ideas and suggestions. Meetings are key activities in the project, since its final objective is to innovate traditional learning methods, through the development of a teaching/learning strategy based on collaborative cultural production and intercultural exchange.- Local communities will be actively involved in the project activity throughout all its phases. During PR3, when students will reflect upon the cultural product to develop, they will also create Community Maps which will identify the cultural resources and the local entities (theatres, cultural institutions, associations, etc.) which will collaborate with the school. Local communities will be involved also as audience during the four National Multiplier events, during which students will perform the cultural product that they developed (PR3). Representatives of all classes participating in the project will then gather in Sanremo during M25 to perform during the transnational Multiplier Event “European School Festival”. - The last Multiplier Event, Perfect - Lessons Learned for practice and policy, will allow to share the lessons learned through the project lifecycle in terms of multi-disciplinary project work, European history teaching innovation through intercultural exchange, developing creativity, collaboration and other transversal skills through cultural production projects. The experience gathered through the project activities will stimulate a participatory debate focused on how school and teachers education policies might get evidence and inspiration from the project results to invest in transversal competences in innovative and learner-motivating ways.<< Results >>The Project will produce the following Project Results:1. Conceptual model and competence framework for intercultural cooperative cultural production; This Output will be a key pillar for the project development, but will also be useful to stimulate reflection in other schools, who will be invited to comment and, if possible, to join the exercise at a later stage of project development;2. A Handbook for School Team Leaders, a more operational tool for the design and development of school-based cultural products;3. A set of 5 cultural products collaboratively developed by the partner schools and associated partner to be presented as good practices at the end of year two. It is expected that, during the third year, other schools and institutions will join the project, producing other final cultural products.4. A set of guidelines for school heads, teachers, students and parents, based on the evaluation of the first experiences conducted, to act as multiplier documents for newcomer schools5. A virtual showcase of school-developed cultural products, including a multimedia documentation of the development process, to be used as a set of inspiring examples for new classes and schools approaching the idea of developing their own cultural product Beyond the specific project contents and concrete Project Results, the PERFECT project will increase the capacity of partner schools to innovate learning design and international collaboration, and will help develop key transversal competences for students, thus producing a substantial impact at the respective local levels. Among other effects, the project will substantially increase schools’ capacity to work transnationally - and online- on complex activities and to enhance their network of international partners, not only schools but also European Networks and other stakeholders.By disseminating the experience gained and its Project Results through the Festival, the project also expects to produce a significant impact on many more schools, that will be invited to join the collaboration platform developed by the project, to share experience and to develop learning outcomes that are recognised as extremely important, but usually not easily developed within the school systems.It is also expected that, through the access to EU Networks (OBESSU, FREREF, Lifelong Learning Platform) and the to the EU collaboration platforms (eTwinning, ESG), some positive impact can be achieved at the EU level. The presence of national and regional education authorities, including those with curriculum definition authority, is expected to produce a multiplier effect in the school system of the territories where partners are based."