The project uses oral history as a driver for improving literacy skills, preserving cultural heritage, and enrich it with the oral history and heritage of other cultures.
We want local students, students with migrant backgrounds and students abroad to learn (each other’s) oral history, language and literacy in an engaging and creative way. We do that by addressing 3 EU VET priorities:
1.Raising awareness of the social and educational value of European Cultural Heritage
Telling, writing and reading stories has been a common tradition all over Europe for centuries. The stories are told and passed on from generation to generation. This oral history is valuable because it shaped our communities: our intangible cultural heritage.
2. Strengthening key competences in VET
Basic skills of literacy have a major impact on life chances, being positively associated with a range of important economic and social outcomes both for individuals and countries. They are very important in vocational education and training, as jobs require basic, transferable skills as well as occupation-specific skills.
3. Social inclusion: supporting the integration of people with migrant backgrounds
Story Valley includes students and other people with migrant backgrounds and their oral history, to stimulate intercultural dialogue and mutual understanding. We believe that inclusion and integration start with understanding each other and the belief in having things (stories) in common.
In conclusion, Story Valley lets oral history meet with innovative and creative techniques of literacy to interpret the stories using visual, sound/audio, and digital materials across disciplines. The program is developed in a way that students strengthen their key competencies literacy and language in an engaging way of learning.