DeTALKS : Creative and inclusive non verbal education

DETALKS – CREATIVE AND INCLUSIVE

NON VERBAL EDUCATION

The non-profit organisation Têtes de l’Art is one of seven partners of the project DeTalks: Creative and Inclusive Non Verbal Education.

 

This project is co-financed within the framework of the Erasmus+ programme and will take place over a two-year period, from September 2018 to August 2020. The kick off meeting took place in Rotterdam from 3 to 6 October 2018.

 

 

     

THE WHY BEHIND THIS PROJECT?

The last few years, the diversity of the European population has been increasing because of rising immigration from between EU countries as well as third countries. Many educational programmes have been developed to provide the “new” citizens with linguistic, vocational and cultural knowledge, needed for their smooth integration. There is however no evidence of an equivalent effort for the development of coherent programmes aimed at facilitating in the “old” citizens’ knowledge and understanding of the “others” in order to prevent and combat xenophobia and anti-migrant hatred.

 

The most crucial problem faced both by the educational providers and the beneficiaries – especially in the early stages – is the language. The “new” citizens have to acquire the basic communication competences in the language of the host society quickly in order to be able to participate in other educational and training programmes for vocational and cultural integration.

 

The most common solution of this problem is through intensive courses of linguistic education, aiming to provide the basic vocabulary, grammar and syntax to the “new” citizens.   In this way, however, the extremely valuable tool of the non-verbal communication is often not used. Non-verbal communication could be the starting point and a complimentary part of the traditional linguistic education. Through a non-formal learning environment characterized most by the non-verbal communication, the “new” citizens could acquire the basic communicative skills more quickly and in a sustainable way.

WHAT ARE THE AIMS OF THE PROJECT?

DeTalks aims to contribute to social inclusion of young immigrants, refugees and asylum seekers in two ways: by developing an innovative methodology for linguistic education through non-verbal communication and by including the local youth (especially the disadvantaged, who are more possible to be radicalised) in the linguistic training in order for them to be familiarised with the different cultures of the newcomers and minimize the xenophobic feelings and attitudes.

 

The project aims to develop educational methodologies of non-verbal communication utilizing the methods, techniques and educational tools of the performing arts. The educational courses following this methodology will be addressed to mixed groups, formed by “new” and “old” citizens and will be implemented according to “peer learning” approach during the pilot phase that will take place from October 2019 to June 2020.

WHAT WILL BE THE OUTCOMES OF THE PROJECT?

We aspire to publish a curriculum with all the methods of non-verbal communication that will have been implemented during the project. It will include a research of good practices and a need assessment per each country, a preparation phase for the proposed methods by each partner and pilot trainings.

 

The curriculum will be developed in 8 languages (English, Swedish, Greek, German, Italian, Hungarian, Dutch and French). In addition to that, there will be seven short videos (approx 7 minutes each) containing the experience of the pilot trainings in each country and guidance on how a youth worker could implement a similar training using the curriculum (subtitled in English).

WHO ARE THE EUROPEAN PARTNERS ?

DeTalks is led by seven partners from European countries including France, Sweden, Greece, Germany, Italy, Hungary and the Netherlands. They are involved in several sectors such as culture, media, and informal training.   For more information on the partners, you can visit their websites: