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.