Educare alla sostenibilità ambientale: centri creativi di apprendimento e linguaggi digitali

The project “Education for Environmental Sustainability: Creative Learning Centers and Digital Tools” is a multidisciplinary and multi-action educational path based on the specific needs of the European adult learning community in the field of Sustainable Development, Sustainability and Environmental Protection. The thematic core of "Echo" is therefore very complex: environment, sustainability, promotion of individual and collective ecological attitudes are European and global challenges that require "complex thinking" and equally stratified design approaches. The organizations therefore came together to produce a strategic path able to re-thinking educational spaces, concretely creating new ones and "orienting them to the future", putting together adult education and languages of creativity, cultural offer, digital innovation. The project and the partnership move from common assumptions, intimately linked to the recognition of the needs of the contemporary adult learning community in Europe, as well as to the specificities of the main fields here involved. The starting point is the recognition of the gaps in the various European education and training systems in the field of Sustainability and Environmental Protection.

The "Echo" project wishes to build an architecture - material and digital - with a high educational impact, aimed at empowering and increasing the skills of a wide public, mainly composed by adult learners, in the field of Environmental Sustainability, leveraging on the attractiveness of the creative medium, on the effectiveness of digital tools, as well as on the skills of non-formal and informal education. The purpose of this variety of actions and languages is to develop a strategy which is able to introduce the elements of Environmental Sustainability Education into the curriculum, reducing the gap between the anthropic and the environmental: an educational center - with extensions of cultural animation, as well as digital ones - which radiates a new attitudinal and critical-analytical culture through the formula of intersectoral cooperation. The goal of the partnership is to contribute to the development of a multi-agent and holistic Environmental Education, rather than "specialized and technical" approach. An educational intervention on the environment in fact presupposes a link between the learner and Sustainability, a model of action as well as behavioral guidance, but also greater civic-democratic awareness.

The "Echo" project implements activities and results that, all together, build up a durable and transferable architecture focused on environmental education. From an operational point of view, during the three-year project life cycle, the following will be implemented: 1. An innovative, future-oriented, proactive educational space in the field of Environmental Sustainability Education, composed by traditionally creative installations as well as digital and immersive platforms. The Innovation Educational Center will have the shape of the cultural hub and the semi-permanent exhibit, at the service of citizenship and / or professionals in the field of education, training, education, socio-cultural animation, as well as related to the complex sector of Sustainable Development and Sustainability (from organizations to associations, up to Environmental Volunteering) and, last but not least, to the wider young, adult and senior learners (art-goers, individuals and communities interested in a lifelong learning process in the field of Sustainability Education); 2. An equally articulated and digital place that offers itself as an interactive and culturally attractive library for both primary and secondary targets, following the previously outlined model of concentric involvement. The Digital Platform differs from the usual E-Learning Platform (OER) models, being a virtual meeting place, composed by networking and immersive learning elements: the presence of direct communication tools will greatly favor the involvement of users, as well as their convergence towards a useful and innovative archive of European good practices on Environmental Sustainability, drawing on virtuous practices and attitudes promoted by European organizations and citizens; 3. Resources and activities aimed at the acquisition of awareness in the field of Environmental Education designed specifically for educators and socio-cultural animators in contact with an audience mainly composed by young adults: updated kits, implemented through laboratory and participatory activities, which enhance professional skills useful to promote and communicate the elements of Environmental Education from the entrepreneurial point of view, in order to guide young adults towards "green jobs", productivity and sustainable entrepreneurship, and with attention to non-formal and informal education models, along with the presence of high impact role models. Extensive attention will be paid to the best forms of environmental activism in Europe: a highly educational and motivational corpus available to educators and socio-cultural animators to integrate their competences and their curriculum, facilitating future implementations and disseminations, fostering the emergence of proactive educating communities.

The shape of the Results is multidisciplinary: 1. Research - Action: The guidelines for the integration of Environmental Sustainability in European Education 2. Digital Platform - Environmental Sustainability Education in Europe 3. Exhibit - “Echo” 4. Toolkit for Educators: volunteering for Environmental Sustainability and for the new culture of consumption and waste 5. Entrepreneurial Curriculum: the possibilities of Environmental Sustainability, role models, best practices, green jobs. A strong educational attitude is underlined: Results and Activities enhance and address ecosystem complexity by placing the needs of the different target groups at the center, as well as the surrounding local environment. The Results "Digital Platform - Environmental Sustainability Education in Europe" and "Exhibit -"Echo" think about the future, are based on the use of sustainable and strictly necessary resources to set up a participatory and sustainable building, attractive, immersive, whose goal is to reach a wide audience and consequently to spread awareness and conviction. The Results "Educator's Toolkit: volunteering for Environmental Sustainability and for the new culture of consumption and waste" and "Entrepreneurial Curriculum: the possibilities of Environmental Sustainability, role models, best practices and green jobs", aimed primarily at educators, facilitate the reinterpretation of environmental education no longer as "science teaching", but as a process aimed at involving the learner, promoting values and behaviors necessary for a sustainable future