Sustainability as the art ... of resilience

We applied for this project to exchange good practices as regards the activation and accession of the resilience literacy as the capacity of people to creatively adapt, using art and culture contents and toolset, to changing environments and contexts. In this perspective the project objectives were rooted on the belief that resilience, like art, permeates and shapes our cultures and constitutes a responsive and generative field that enlivens individuals, communities, institutions, and societies. We addressed the following needs: - reorienting pre-service and in-service training of educators, teachers and other staff members within lifelong learning institutions, youth and cultural and creative sectors, helping the design and introduction of innovative pedagogies, to extend and develop the competences of educators and other personnel who support adult learners to face unprecedented risks, and societal challenges, thus contributing to the recovery resilience of the educational, cultural and creative sectors, building upon the connection between culture/art and sustainability. -exploring how the culture/arts can facilitate learning through engaged senses, bypassing conditioned thinking patterns, helping more persistent experiences

Exploring and exchanging those good practices, in the field of adult education, within the perspective that resilience, like art, permeates and shapes our cultures and constitutes a responsive and generative field that enlivens individuals, communities, institutions, and societies. As a matter of fact, if it is an evidence that resilient human ecosystems adapt rapidly and creatively to constantly changing conditions, the Partnership was convinced that the process of achieving resiliency is an art as well as a science. By implementing the project we wanted to develop good practices to embed resilience literacy in adult education provisions involving multisectoral efforts to manage complex challenges, in co-creative endeavors, positing the synchronicity between innovation and actions taken in order to multiply individual and collective capacities to adapt repeatedly to changing circumstances, contexts and environments: the very essence of resilience. Moreover, the Partner Organizations through the project implementation aimed to exploring how culture and art, as the backbone of societies, provided civilizations’ long-term survival, being able to generate adaptive arrangements that address known and unanticipated change.

the following activities were implemented: -Identification and exchange of those good practices whose teaching, methodological approaches were based upon the connection between art and sustainability towards individual, social resilience, helping the design and introduction of innovative pedagogies, to extend the competences of educators and other personnel who support adult learners to face unprecedented risks, and societal challenges, thus contributing to the recovery resilience of the educational, cultural and creative sectors. Assessment of the current state of the art of good practices based on the connection between art/creativity and environmental sustainability, are: -to highlight the level of awareness of the mentioned connection, available specific resources/documentation targeting this sector, existing barriers; -to discover the level of alignment of Organizations, available specific resources/documentation targeting this sector, existing barriers to the alignment and eventual good practices of early adopters; -Kick-off meeting and stage 1 of the exchange of good practices, 23 May 2022; -2nd transnational project meeting, 2nd stage, 17-18 November 2022; -3rd transnational project meeting, 3rd stage, 3 February 2023

- supported professional development with a view to innovating and improving the quality of teaching, training: using learning outcomes based on the connection between art and sustainability; - increased awareness as regards the responsibility of Adult Education institutions towards increased resilience of adult learners and their community of reference; The exchange of good practices during (and in-between) the 3 transnational project meetings were prepared thanks to questionnaires developed and filled out by the project’s teams and presented during the meetings; among others, the questionnaires addressed the following: - the impact of the energy crisis (as well as of other past or emerging crisis in Europe) on organizations’ strategies, operations and learning provisions and the areas/target groups where resilience is vital/critical and has to be improved; - ancient art/cultural products from local/regional/national contexts which has contributed to the resilience of Partners’ territories over the centuries and in which way - existing practices using local folklore/myths/characters/legends (or other creative practices) as drivers towards the activation of resilience to the benefit of individuals and communities