M.A. Piotr Jankowski
Director of the Biblioteka Publiczna
w Dzielnicy Ursus m. st. Warszawy
Warszawa, Poland
INTERCULTURAL METHODS OF
MAKING ADULTS INTELLECTUALLY ACTIVE
DRAWN UP IN READCOM PROJECT
Kraków, 16.06.2009
Biblioteka Publiczna im. W. J. Grabskiego w Dzielnicy Ursus m. st. Warszawy
(W. J. Grabski Public
Library in Ursus District of the City of Warsaw) as
the coordinator together with the educational institutions from Belgium,
Portugal, Austria and Turkey has developed many attractive intercultural
approaches within framework of project READCOM - Reading Clubs for Adult
Learning Communities, nominated by European Commission as a one of 20 best
educational projects of Grundtvig.
The main aims of the project was to create intercultural methods of making adults
intellectually and socially active; to promote the
intercultural education and to develop knowledge for better recognising
and comparing different identities and different cultures through the books,
movies, meetings and to develop training courses for educators, librarians,
teachers.
The main achievements of the project were:
1. The handbook for the mentors of Readcom
clubs containing the following modules:
·
“Creative meetings with books”,
·
“Intercultural education”,
·
“Reading strategies”,
·
“Literary writing”,
·
“Editing and publishing”,
·
“Transcending Boundaries and Bridging Gaps”,
·
“Multicultural Education through Books and Films for Adults”,
·
“Analysing the texts and the films”
2. The common website in 6 languages www.readcom.info
3. Intercultural quizzes
4. Two day international conference with the general
session and the workshops wit
230 participants and partners from 5 countries in
Warsaw
The way of working in the project
1. The most significant was
the decision that each partner would develop its activities according to the needs
of local society and own possibilities.
For example:
in Austria –
the programme of the club focused on using literature
for better recognizing the identities of the immigrants from former Yugoslavia,
Turkey, Poland etc and develop their language skills as well as the identities
of women in the modern society.
in Portugal
- the programme was aimed at people interested in
reading but not being fluently literate as well as homeless people, in Belgium
- the programme was developed to integrate young and
adults through literature.
In the Library in Warsaw the following activities have
been developed:
- IT classes (basic computer skills),
- Creative meetings with books (“the book of my
childhood”, “the deepest memories”),
- English language course (basic
English),
- Intercultural workshops with quizzes, books and
movies (“The Pianist” and the Snow”)
In the opinion of the Polish participants the most
exciting experience was intercultural
workshops with “The snow” by Orhan Pamuk.
The aims of the workshops were to know better the
culture of Turkey and to recognize better the identities of Polish and Turkish
people.
The participants of the workshops had read the
chapters, having been indicated by our
partners from Turkey. After reading they developed their knowledge about the author
and the history and culture of Turkey. At the beginning of the workshops the
participants were asked to itemize the positive and negative features of Polish
society.
Then they went through all the questions of
intercultural quiz about Turkey directly from READCOM website. Some questions
were difficult to answer, some of them were astonishing. They enriched the answers
of the quiz by finding the additional information in the internet and in the
books collected in the library .
One of the chapters of the book “The Snow” was read by
an actor from Warsaw theatre. Some other chosen passages were read by the
participants. Using the information from the read chapters the participants
were asked to itemize the positive and negative features of Turkish society,
described in “The Snow”. Then they started comparing Polish and Turkish
features. The results were very interesting. They have found a lot of common
features.
The conclusions of the workshops were very
interesting:
the picture
of Turkish society in Orhan Pamuk’s
novel was very depressing and surprisingly very similar to the picture of
Polish society before Poland joined the European Union.
The impact on the participating
groups of adults
The project has developed the programme
of the educational activities of each partner very
much. It
aroused a big interested among the librarians, educators, the members of the
University of the Third Age and adult readers of the library.
They got to know different cultures deeply and
largely. Thank to that they better recognize their own identities as well as
the identities of different societies, different cultures. (Most of the
participants would have never visited the places and the countries which they
visited with the READCOM project).
Besides, they have learned the ways of organising international meetings, workshops, conferences.
They have improved their language and computer skills.
Moreover the project integrated the
participants so strongly that they became almost a big family and they are eager to
continue further partnership
Final conclusion
To Public Library in Warsaw and the participants of
the project it has been outstanding
experience in terms of interculturality: awareness of other
cultures, searching for identities and recognizing them as well as in terms of
becoming more open for themselves and for the others. Those who participated in
the project still collaborate with our library, proposing new ideas and new
activities.