"The project was conceived in view of the fact that the importance of relationships with and to other people is increasingly being scientifically proven for our happiness, well-being and a functioning community. The importance of positive relationships for successful learning processes is becoming increasingly apparent in the field of education.However, in the field of education, there are no specific approaches to how relationship work can be established in the work between teachers and learners. Based on the psychological context, processes, methods and approaches are known in order to shape successful relationships or to restore disturbed relationships. But to what extent these insights can be integrated into the concrete educational work is left to the individual teacher. In addition, ""relationship work"" is always perceived as deficient and usually begins when the conflict has occurred. Relationship work, however, is regarded by the project partners in the sense of salutogenesis as a ubiquitous positive and not least also preventive competence, which should be used on a daily basis.The project will thus help the ""educators of the future"" to discover and unfold their relationship skills and bring them profitably into the everyday life of the educational context.The project is being carried out by four partners from the EU Member States Netherlands, Austria and Germany. From the Netherlands comes the association Teach the Future, which develops innovative educational approaches and integrates them into everyday school life through intensive cooperation with schools. From Austria, the project will involve the University of Graz-Styria Regional Center of Competence (RCE), which has extensive experience in creating different educational materials and establishing them in the educational context. The two German project partners are associations coming from Berlin and Brandenburg. The association Here & Now is closely involved in scientific communities and wants to make scientific findings in the fields of psychology, pedagogy, anthropology and behavioral biology more usable for the community. The second German association HochVier is the applicant organization. HochVier stands for intensive work with many different actors on different levels, for innovative methods in the extracurricular and school sectors and for various projects in the regional, national and EU-wide area.In the course of the project different stages will be passed, in which several intellectual outputs will be created and different multiplier events will be carried out. The project partners make use of a range of methods, which ranges from research activities through self-directed and collaborative learning, to creative and design elements..The project will achieve five specific results. At the end of the project there will be a study, a practical guideline and a curriculum for effective relationship work in education, which explaining the most important basics and interdependencies and containing dedicated modules for different educational contexts. In addition to specific instructions for action, these modules will also contain methodological suggestions and further information on the Integration of relationship work into everyday education.At the end of the project various factsheets as well as a curriculum for effective relationship work in the education area will be available, which will explain the most important basics and interdependencies and contain decidedly practical modules for different educational contexts. Another very concrete result will be a ‘Relationship KIT’, with which actors can approach the topic in a playful way. In this sense, the relationship KIT serves as a low-threshold access and enables ""offline"" group work on various levels.In the framework of the Multiplier Events, an international symposium will be held in order to familiarize key multipliers in the EU with the topic of ""relationship work in the educational context"" as well as the educational materials created. The symposium is designed to be held as an annual event.In our view, the sustainability potential of this project is enormous, as this topic starts to become more meaningful. We are at the beginning of a ""wave"" which will have made the topic virulent in a few years. This project can thus help to raise awareness of this important topic in the educational context and can offer valuable and useful educational materials to interested people.Other longer-term benefits are that we, as democratic societies, benefit from being able to strengthen the basic character of our democratic way of life, not only in the context of education, but above all because this can be an initial learning space. Because a positive culture of relationship supports, strengthens and automatically promotes social cohesion and democratic core competencies such as perspective taking and the tolerant and respectful discussion and decision-making ability in and for the group."

<< Background >>For European citizens there are a lot of different adult learning opportunities available. Despite this the results from the EU labour force survey shows that in 2019 the participation of adults in in lifelong learning rate in the EU stood at 10,8 %. Because of this, new and innovative ways of conveying knowledge and reaching the target group of adult education need to be explored to catch the initial attention of learners to get them involved in lifelong learning activities. All of the involved organisations in this project believe that next to established didactic methods, games can be one important tool to reach this goal and to improve the quality of adult education of the future. We all have good experience to convey bulky and difficult topics in a playful way while nowadays many approaches in adult education are still not motivating and attractive enough. Games guarantee a low-threshold participatory introduction to the topics that can be adjusted to the needs of the participants and the learning effects can be significantly higher than with classical knowledge transfer through teacher-centred teaching.In times of digital transformation and more and more virtual learning due to the pandemic, we also want to cover this field to reach learners and educator online with our videos on best practice games. Many educators still do not know about the opportunities they are given with games as pedagogical approaches and we want to make them aware of this and thus improving the quality of non-formal adult education. There is also a huge number of games that can be used in this field, but barely anyone does have an overview on them and which contents and competences they address. We want to tackle this problem by collecting best practice games, showing their strengths and weaknesses and commenting how they can be used in a proper manner. Moreover, many stakeholders in education, politics and society still do not know about the advantages of games as tools for transmitting knowledge, competences, skills and as tools for validation of those competences. We want to address this problem my concretely getting in touch with them and giving recommendations on how problems can be solved. Apart from games in adult education, the focus on European values in adult education could be stronger. Many ideas of course focus on integration, inclusion, equality, freedom and diversity. But with games these values can on one hand really be sampled through different methods and experiences. And on the other hand, they can be the content or the topic of games and hereby real knowledge about the EU is transmitted. We want to include European values in our project and put a focus on which games can be perfectly used to convey them to adult learners in a playful way. Especially inclusion will highly benefit from this project, because games can be adapted to the most different kind of learners and can communicate even the most difficult topics in an understandable manner. In addition games can help adults that have been out of a classroom for many years to refocus on their learning being interactive and participatory and more engaging than most forms of learning. Games can be created and used with a small investment of funds and many can be implemented with very little overhead.Our experiences from previous EU projects shows that a cross-border, intercultural exchange of experiences among colleagues in adult education contributes to learning and developing new perspectives, successful learning methods, teaching materials and innovative approaches.In general, we have always had amazing experiences with Erasmus+ projects and want to go on contributing to a more inclusive networked Europe with improved lifelong learning for everyone.That’s why we submit this application (amply improved and adapted after it was highly rated but still declined last year) to enrich adult education for all learners in this field.<< Objectives >>The main objectives of this project are promoting inclusion and diversity in adult education, improving the competences of educators and other adult education staff and to give concrete advise on how to use games in adult education about European values such as inclusion, diversity, participation and engagement. That includes methods of addressing the target group, shaping learning environments through games, exploring the strengths and limitations of the use of games in adult education, best-practice examples, information/instructions about special games, information about what games can be used for as well as concrete methods to implement games in educational activities and working environments. The main focus of using games is knowledge transfer. This includes theoretical knowledge on a certain topic, e.g. European values, but also soft skills that can be taught and validated very well through them. Next to this the creation of learning environments is also an important topic for us. Games create a safe environment for participation and reflection where confrontation is not necessarily perceived as threatening. Through games new strategies for active participation in classrooms, society and other authentic learning environments where the learner is challenged can be developed. Learning progresses are hereby strengthened through motivating conditions like rewards and through instant feedback like winning or losing. Furthermore, the aim is to present innovative and to get to know playful methods of knowledge transfer that can be implemented with existing resources in one's own educational work that initiate individual learning processes and make the learning outcomes more sustainable.We also want to promote the European ideas and improve intercultural understanding by sharing our experience from Erasmus+ in the different project steps and events. The participating organisations also aim for improving their own educational activities, networks and intercultural/ international work.<< Implementation >>Besides the project results we are going to implement general management activities like financial and time management lead by HochVier as the head of the steering committee as well as quality management activities like evaluations, feedback loops, qualitative and quantitative measures and controlling milestones. To achieve the project results there will be various activities such as online project meetings, designing, spreading and analysing questionnaires, creating a website, video making, collecting games, commenting on them and writing about it. Moreover, national approaches, problems and solutions will be gathered to be included in the project. Discussions with stakeholders will be held and recommendations will be given. There will be several dissemination activities like publishing the outputs, creating a website, spreading information in newsletters of our partners and our network etc. During the five transnational meetings, all the monitoring activities, communication processes and trust building will be emphasized. There will be activities to prepare the multiplier events which are conferences with stakeholders, educators etc. where the project results will be presented and also the multiplier events themselves are an implemented activity.<< Results >>To reach the goals set by this project we will identify, exchange and test already existing good practices. Furthermore, different project results (PRs) will be created during this partnership.The first project result, the study about the current situation of games in adult education, the benefits, different approaches and the application, will provide a basis for the project and will help the partnership to collect a big amount of relevant knowledge to process in the project, to exchange and adapt in the work. The second project result will not only help others to create games for (adult) education but it will also help the partners to do so. The toolkit will combine many methods for tailoring individual games in an innovative way and is a great possibility to combine different topics and methods and to even create synergies with other education fields in the future. The collection of games in the third output will be a great overview for the partners about best practice games, the applied methods and the trained competencies. It will make it easier for everyone to find the right game for a certain situation in adult education combined with all necessary information. There will also be videos in which some of the games will be presented to include an even more low-threshold and attractive medium which will reach out to many people. The fourth result will be recommendations for stakeholders which will help partners to communicate their findings and results more forcefully to stakeholders and provide a good and clear summary of what needs to be improved in the area games in adult education. They will eventually contribute to a more frequent application of this gorgeous method of non-formal education. In this way, the project can also have a longer-term impact and bring improvements for the target group.The project outcomes are structured in a logical way, guiding through the topic of games in adult education. In this project, the focus will be on how games can help communicating European values which will also help the target groups and people all over the EU.The expected results of these project results will lead to an improved and more frequent use of games in the teaching activities on European values of the involved organisations in this partnership and beyond. Other relevant organisations from the network of the participating partners, interested providers of adult education outside these networks as well as individual adult educators will be animated to use games more often in their educational activities.For the participating organisations, the project will create a strong European network where ideas and methodologies are confronted and shared. Through the exchange of good practices, organisations and educators will gather inspiration in an international context to apply methodologies in their own context and there will be an increase of intercultural awareness. The exchange with colleagues from other European countries also creates mutual understanding basis for future cross-border cooperation and lays the foundation for internationalisation efforts of the involved organisations as well as the involved staff which contributes to a European space for learning.

<< Objectives >>With this project we want to empower youth in rural settings and compensate the difficulties they may encounter growing up in this rural areas. We want to value the environmental wealth and the cultural heritage of our villages and promote the values of respect and protection of them.We want to network with other similar villages in Europe, offer Erasmus + and ESC mobility opportunities to our young people and learn from their good practices in youthwork.<< Implementation >>We will do “Escape-room” type games but in the whole village, outdoors, with riddles and challenges that they will have to overcome to solve the mystery that will arise in each town.For 24 months we will meet to coordinate virtually and in person. 5 organizations from 4 countries (FI, DE, HU, ES) will work as a team to create good quality activities and products that can be reused in the future by other similar entities. We will do a participatory youth work process.<< Results >>We hope that this project will contribute to preventing the risk of exclusion that being an adolescent-young person in a rural environment, with few opportunities to meet people from other cultures, implies.We hope to generate 3 intellectual products related to Escape-room methodologies: a tool-kit to learn how to create your own Escape-town, 4 Escape-town games and ideas bank for future projects. We look forward to opening doors and minds for a critical and engaged European citizenry.

<< Objectives >>One of our main priorities is to improve, promote and contribute to “inclusion & diversity in all fields of education”, focussing on adult education. For us, games of all kinds are a very effective and low threshold way to convey knowledge. By using games big and complicated topics are presented a lot easier than through formal education and common approaches. Games are creative strategies that can deal with special learning situations, blockades, uncertainty and more.<< Implementation >>In order to raise awareness about games as an effective educational tool and to provide adult educators with new educational materials - games, during the project implementation will be created 3 intellectual outputs:- Manual-toolkit on the power of games for adult education- Games for inclusion (4 new games)- Collection of good practices of existing games and tools for inclusion in adult education.- 4 Multiplier events - 2 Transnational meetings- Project management<< Results >>The project will have visible and invisible results:Visible results will be intelectual outputs created during project implementation:IO1: Manual-toolkit on the power of games for adult educationIO2: Games for inclusion (4 new games)IO3: Collection of good practices of existing games and tools for inclusion in adult education.The invisible results will be gained competencies and raised awareness about games as an effective and powerful tool in adult education.

In the strategic partnership FAE (Fusion of Art and Education) we will focus on the cooperation between adult educators and artists. We think this collaboration will help to develop the competences for the artists and the adult educators to launch educational and artistic projects, which are important for the future of democracy and participation. Involved are four expierenced organisations from Germany (HochVier - Gesellschaft für politische und Interkulturelle Bildung), Italy (CESIE), Portugal (Embaixada da Juventude) and Austria (uniT GmbH).They will do a research about the state of the art of the use of art and artists in adult education (IO1), organize examplary artistic and educational courses/events/pilot projects (IO2) and give recommandations about a further fruitfull collaboration of art and education (IO3).The project has four target groups:For the residents of the involved regions, communities or urban spaces the project will•give the participants a voice, make their needs visible and audible. The projects have to involve residents or members of the chosen community to reflect on their situation by using the means of art.•foster and stimulate dialogue, communication and discussion among the participants. •increase democratic partizipation and democratic development of society•raise awareness for the beneficiaries that they can do something to change a situation, to design a better future for them and to fight for their visions and ideas.•increase identification with their region, district etc. and the inclusion and communication between different groups in the according territory. Results for the artists•The project gives the artists a chance to demonstrate what art can do for a society, communities etc.•It can give an example of a two- way cooperation between art and adult education, which can also be a role model for other types of cooperation with other important institutions in society. •It will increase the competences of artists to run this type of project in cooperation together with other institutions. Results for the adult educators and adult education organisations•Gathering experiences how arts and adult education can cooperate, how the different approaches can create synergetic effects for the final beneficiaries and how the different roles in the project can be defined clearly, so that all the partners can bring in their own strengths•Increasing the competences to implement such cooperative projects and to see what additional competencies adult educators and organisations working in the field of adult education will need to run these projects and to implement the cooperation successfully•Motivating organisations for adult education to engage artists for projectsResults for target groups of dissemination•Artists’ unions and organisations, artists, adult educators and their organisations as well as politicians and stakeholders are here target groups. The project offers good practice examples, ideas, concepts and recommendations for cooperation between art and education.All outputs will be available as free OER downloads on the project's website and the websites of the participating organisations. The OER products and the link to these websites will also be published on EPALE as on other platforms.The projects website will remain online and updated available beyond project length so that an easy access to our dissemination materials is guaranteed. For the website we want to produce content even after the project has finished and want to establish as one important site for people looking for information about art and artists in adult education.The eight Multiplier Events are according to IO2 and IO3. They want show results, recommandations and best practise to a wider public and so dissaminate. At the same time they serve for discussion, reflection, evaluation and further development.First the project results will be disseminated into the participating organisations to improve the structures and procedures of the involved organisations and their staff's competences and expertise in using art and artists.The outside targets for disseminating the intellectual outcomes are adult education providers at all levels but also individual educators and artists, their organisations, stakeholder, politicians etc.