HADRiAN – Heritage Awareness DRiving Active Networks is a 24-months program supported by European Commission’s Erasmus+ program, under the KA2 – Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices action, and specifically, KA201 – Strategic Partnerships for secondary school education.
Starting in September 2019, the program and its partners seek to build bridges through innovation among different countries (Greece, the Netherlands and Italy) and different disciplines (heritage management, water management, urban development, social engagement, education).
HADRIAN’s overarching goal is to develop and pilot a ‘teach-the-teacher’ toolkit in order to enhance teachers at secondary schools to facilitate acquisition of cultural knowledge, pointing to heritage, environmental and social awareness.
The program has a three-fold mission:
-To strengthen the role of the educator, by making teachers the facilitators of collective processes, rather than merely the providers of knowledge
-To link heritage awareness to social engagement
-To prepare future generations as the problem-solvers towards environmental, social, cultural and economical sustainability and as the active citizens and leaders of our urban future
Three different heritage waterlines will operate as ‘entry points’ to the relation between Cultural Heritage, Water and Social Engagement: Hadrian Aqueduct (Athens, Greece), the medieval Qanat (Palermo, Italy)and the inner-waterways at Delfshaven neighbourhood (Rotterdam, the Netherlands), already linking different neighborhoods within and among the participant cities in physical terms, are also about to provide links in conceptual terms, through combining different aspects of the societal value of cultural and water resources, i.e. the sense of belonging and ownership, inclusion, identity-building.
To this end, the main outcome of HADriAN will be to re-conceptualize Heritage Awareness, including cultural and environmental aspects, as a driving force to motivate students towards cooperation, community-building and social engagement for sustainable, integrated, place-and people-based urban development, environmental awareness and placemaking.
Combining formal and non-formal educational approaches and methods, the replicable and transferable toolkit will include four specific tools:
i) on-site exploration and field research of the local heritage waterline
ii) co-development and sharing (through an App) a common narrative about the waterline
iii) co-development of a shared vision on the waterline’s management
iv) student-led stakeholder mapping and engagement
The project produces 3 intellectual outputs:
1: An innovative case-study on the re-conceptualization of Heritage Awareness
2: An open manual for teachers in secondary education, providing access and instructions on all the 4 tools
3: The final version of the current website that acts as a hub for all the digital needs of the teachers in using the 4 tools