SPAR

SPAR, Excursion during European pilot course in Lousada, Portugal, Oct 2017

SPAR, excursion to Porto during European pilot course in Lousada, Portugal, Oct 2017

SPAR, at the heritage road during European pilot course in Lousada, Portugal, Oct 2017

SPAR, Excursion to Heritage museum during European pilot course in Lousada, Portugal, Oct 2017

SPAR, group work during European pilot course in Lousada, Portugal, Oct 2017

SPAR, 2016 - 2018

Interfolk was partner in the Erasmus+ strategic partnerships for Adult education, developement of innovation, entitled: "Curricula for culture volunteers and managers in sparsely populated areas" (SPAR), Sept 2016 to Aug 2018 (24 months)

Voluntary Arts from UK (now called Creative Lives) was the project manager and Interfolk was the project designer and applicant and co-coordinator.

The partnership circle included:

Two national umbrellas for voluntary culture: Voluntary Arts Network (now Creative Lives) in United Kingdom, and the National Association of Cultural Councils in Denmark;
One national association for liberal adult education: The Hungarian Folk High School Society, represented by Janos Toth (the association closed in 2022).
Two organisations from the liberal adult education and NGO work, with expertise in field research and curricula planning: Foundation of Alternative Educational Initiatives in Poland, and Interfolk, institute for Civil Society from Denmark;
One public body, the Culture Department of the Municipality of Lousada, Portugal.
Furthermore, ActKnowledge from New York with Helen Clark as adviser was involved in the pilot work as external evaluator to incorporate the Theory of Change methodology in the impact evaluations.

This multilateral partnership circle with a huge dissemination potential represented a trans-national European totality of varied expertises and experiences in the field, which we could not find in just one of the countries.

Background and need

During the last years, we have seen more political and public interest for reviving the rural and sparsely populated areas and to counter the current migration from rural to urban areas.

One of more ways to counter this trend is to provide more available and involving arts and culture activities with added community values. To secure cultural sustainability in these areas, we need to strengthen the “citizen help citizen" or "peer to peer approach", where civil society associations from the cross-cultural sector of amateur arts, voluntary culture, and heritage are engaged.

Aim and objectives

The overall aim is to improve the competences of the voluntary associations and their volunteers to provide enlivening arts and culture opportunities in the sparsely populated communities with an added value for civic and democratic participation, community bonding and local identity.

The objectives are

To develop innovative ways of outreach to citizens engaged in arts and culture to become resourceful culture volunteers.
To develop high quality courses tailored to these groups on how to organise cultural activities with an added community value.
To develop the competences and skills of the voluntary associations to support volunteering and cooperation with stakeholders.
To develop appropriate methods to assess the involved knowledge, skills and attitudes to fulfil such demanding voluntary work.

Outline of activities

The innovative dimension of this project was to integrated an adult education methodology in the activties of culture associations, where we intended to:

Complete local field surveys of the current competence profiles of culture volunteering to get a baseline as well as state of the art examples for the succeeding development work;
Develop an integrated curricula frame for culture volunteers as well as culture managers to provide enlivening cross-culture activities with added community values.
To design and test a series of national pilot courses for culture volunteers and managers in the varied contexts of the partner countries.
To design and test new Erasmus+ pilot courses for culture volunteers as well as culture managers with the aim to offer sustainable Erasmus+ training events as well as high quality national courses after the end of the project.
To provide a Communication Portal with desk research and other supporting information about the issues of the project as well as presentations of the project’s pilot work and outputs to the virtual audiences.

More information

Task plan

FIRST PHASE - PROVIDE PORTAL AND BASELINE
WP 01: Start-up, essential plans and management Sept – Oct 2016
M1: First partner meeting in London, Oct 2016
WP 02: Provide knowledge portal, Nov 2016 – Aug 2018
WP 03: Mapping competences, series of local surveys, Nov 2016 – Jan 2017
WP 04: Survey Report, five languages PDF-editions Jan – April 2017

SECOND PHASE - PILOT WORK
M2: Second partner meeting in Copenhagen, April 2017
WP 05: Develop curricula for culture boosters, March - May 2017

WP 06: Test national pilot 2-day /weekend courses, May – Sept 2017
WP 07: Test Erasmus one 5-day pilot course in Lousada, May – Oct 2017
M3: Third partner meeting in Lousada, PT (after course), Oct 2017
WP 08: Curricula Compendia, five language PDF-editions, Oct 2017 - Jan 2018
WP 09: Plan & announce Erasmus+ courses (after project)Nov 2017 - Feb 2018

THIRD PHASE - VALORISE THE RESULTS

WP 10: Complete five national conferences, Mar-April 2018

WP11: European conference in Budapest, Feb - June 2018
M4: Fourth partner meeting in Budapest (after conference), June 2018

WHOLE PERIOD - TRANSVERSAL WORK
WP 12: Dissemination ex portal, Oct 2016 – Aug 2018
WP 13: Impact evaluation, whole period (external expert), Sept 2016 - Aug 2018
WP 14: Project Management, Sept 2016 - Aug 2018