Art Expressions against bullying at school. An Erasmus+ project of six schools to prevent bullying by means of ARTS! Schools from Greece, Italy, Lithuania, Poland, Sint Maarten and The Netherlands combine their creativity! This project is funded by the European Program Erasmus+ 
|
"Art expressions against bullying at school" is a project which will last two years (2020-2022) and includes schools from
Greece, Italy, Lithuania, Netherlands, Poland and St. Maarten Dutch Caribbean with students from 12 to 15 years old.
The direct target group is made of students and teachers, but the range of the project is going to influence wider groups (local, regional, national and European levels). Within two years there will be one Joint Staff Training event in the opening,five Short-Term Exchanges of Groups of Pupils in the medium and one International Meeting in the final period. This project seeks to address the problem of bullying that frequently occurs among students affecting their learning and development, active integration and participation in the school environment. A school-wide intervention against bullying by supporting creativity, using the arts in education is an effective response to this problem. Additionally, social and emotional learning skills through art in how to manage emotions and build empathy, tolerance, teamwork and positivesocial behaviors will serve students for their lifetime allowing them to deal with bullying.
The overall objective of the proposed project is to contribute to young people's development of social and emotional skills by creating artworks, to reflect on bullying and address it effectively and be active and responsible future Europeancitizens,who will build a tolerant and democratic society.
The specific objective is to enhance creativity, social and emotional learning skills through arts, to cultivate empathy and self- knowledge, to activate and encourage individuality, a growth mindset and collaboration.
Particular attention will be given to incorporate art activities with lessons in the curriculum.
The project results are expected to be the following:
To improve knowledge and skills of teachers in order to support their students in handling bullying in a creative art way, to improve practice creativity, social-emotional learning skills through art-based activities and prevent future occurrences of
bullying.
To improve understanding of diversity as a source for cooperation, to create a safe school culture developing a sense of togetherness, mutual understanding, respect and tolerance among the others, to encourage individuality as well as a
growth mindset and involve the parents in this process.
To motivate and engage students in the project who show low performance and have negative social behavior at school
through team work and collaborative art activities.To enrich students’ ICT and communication and language skills making them able to address and solve constructively interpersonal problems. To promote EU’s broad linguistic, cultural diversity, intercultural dialogue, democratic values and networks for future international cooperation and implement life-longlearning techniques.
To enhance cooperation and increase the motivation for learning and developing emotional skills, to enrich European
identity in order to break prejudices, to provide foster respect, tolerance and universal values.To reinforce all members of the school community to be positive in comparing different approaches to similar problems and designing common strategies to address them.
The project methodology is innovative, bringing teachers and students closer as members sharing learning experiences
and developing social and emotional life skills for their school and community.
Additionally, art creativity is boosted and interactive and digital methodologies are applied. Teachers will collaborate, investigate new teaching techniques and methodologies using creative arts, teaching methods practicing teamwork, develop appropriate teaching materials, share them with their students and colleagues and spread the interactive working experiences.
The outputs of our project will be the following:
To establish Peer Supporters groups in each partner school which will keep working and spreading the results of the
project after the end of it. To integrate art activities within the curriculum and learning additional tools for both students and teachers making them more energized and knowledgeable of dealing successfully bullying issues during the two years of the project but also after the end of it. To promote online good practices’ guide with art activities, to support a number of different communication networks among all partner schools: social media, websites, EU and digital platforms, chat rooms, a project blog, photos, videos, press releases, e-book case study, e-newsletter, a good practices’ guide and debates among the participating pupils.
The background of this project is mainly based on the psychological context which is inseparably related to school
environment where bullying issues appear nowadays. The school-wide artistic intervention and the cultivation of social, emotional skills seem to be the response to deal with this crucial problem in our contemporary schools.
Erasmus Corner in Comenius College, The Netherlands