Activity 1 : Community learning festival “EVERYONE IS LEARNING”
- Prepare participants for organising and leading their own workshops
- Enable and empower participants to act in a role of a educator and a learner
- Support participants in organising a community learning festival
- Facilitate reflection of the experience and self-assessment of the competences
- Foster mutual learning and solidarity
- Acting independently and showing initiative
- Planning and organising
- Conveying and exchanging information and ideas
- Collaborating with others in teams and networks
- Managing and leading others
Depends on the type of workshops chosen by participant
The activity consists of organising a festival and teaching the learners all the tasks required for it. The idea behind the community learning festival “Everyone is learning” is to bring people together in order to learn together and from each other.
Festival can be organised as a part of a training programme (1-day activity) or as a stand-alone event for a broader audience (several days). It is prepared and run by the participants with the help of trainers/educators/facilitators.
The aims of the lifelong learning festival “Everyone is learning” are:
- To awaken interest towards learning amongst people of different ages and through that to increase their participation in lifelong learning.
- To create conditions for the development of the participants’ key competences, soft skills incl. civic competence.
- To broaden and enrich the participantsu2019 social circle and promote intercultural and intergenerational dialogue and solidarity.
Proposed steps of the preparation and implementation of the festival:
- Discuss the purpose of the event with participants
- Choose a tentative date, location, theme, name, etc.
- Brainstorm a list of tasks to be completed (workshops, logistics, promotion, etc.)
- Determine roles and responsibilities in a team
- Determine completion dates for each task
- Let the participants choose tasks for themselves
- Discuss with participants the topics and contents of the workshops they would like to organise. What would they like to share with others? Their expertise, hobbies, passions, skills? These could be a wide range of activities: art workshops, creative presentations, discussions, installations, performances etc. Everyone, despite their age or previous experience, has a chance to try themselves both in the role of a learner and a leader or a facilitator.
- Compose the programme of the festival. Festival programme should embrace people of different ages, professional and personal experience, interests and abilities, including people with fewer opportunities and physical and intellectual challenges.
- Define materials and resources needed for the workshops
- Establish a budget and available fundinCreate a promotional strategy and implement it
- Involve volunteers from the community if relevant
- Define a monitoring system including a communication system to deal with problems
- Organise at least two preparational meetings for the festival. Depending on the participants’ needs and characteristics increase the number of the preparational meetings or organise individual meetings to help participants to prepare their workshops.
- Implement the festival and evaluate it. Evaluation allows you to reflect on what worked well and to identify areas of further learning as well as improvement for future festivals or events.
It is important that each participant is given the opportunity to provide feedback about what worked and what did not, if they have reached their objectives.
- What did you learn from this task or project that you are most excited about? (What is your greatest takeaway?)
- How did you use your self-direction skills (self-awareness, initiative, goal setting and planning, monitoring and correction) to help you during this task?
- How did you use your strengths and interests?
- What did you do to find the right resources and get the help you needed?
- Were you able to stay on track with your steps and schedule/timeline? If so, how?
- Overall, did you improve your capacity to act independently and sense of initiative, did it decline, or stay the same? Why do you think this happened? What examples or evidence can you share to show your growth during this task?
This festival is by its nature an intergenerational event. Its aim is to bring together people of different ages, interests, experience to learn together and strengthen the sense of community.