News

• Reflection on 2009-2010 by Wim Kratsborn

  12.09.2010 20:23

  Dear friends,

  The schoolyear 2009-2010 was a good year for the project To-Gather.

  Three festivals were organised: Den Bosch, Liverpool and Haslev. The concept for the festivals was concretised and appeared to be very active, creative and good work.

  The festival/conference in Den Bosch on 9/11/9 was a good start and a source of inspiration for all of us. It was a pity that the festival in Liverpool on May 7 didn’t work out well, because of the small number of participants and some organisational problems. We’ve tried to learn from it for the next festivals.

  The festival in Haslev was a big succes and especially thanks to Henrik Bak. The audience was big, the quality high and the atmosphere great. See: www.jandoddema.nl/download/haslev/haslev.wmv

  We had a good meeting on March 26 with the coördinators, concentrating on the concept, the toolkit and the plans of actions.

  For 2010-2011 it’s important and essential to realize the plan of action and to disseminate To-Gather in schools.

  Please mail me the timesheets for 2009-2010 (there were send in a previous mail) as a legitimation of the staff-costs.

  The good news is that we are selected by Brussels to become a good-example as a dissemination project in the DIVA-project.

  Then To-Gather will be promoted extra and we will do presentations for new European projects.

  There’s a lot of work to be done in 2010-2011:

  -the improvement and activation of the website

  These are some present tasks for you each partner:

  1. select a sister school in another country. For example the School of Education in Groningen may cooperate with the teacher

  training institution RTTEMA in Riga or a primary school in Miskolc with a primary school in Coimbra.

  2. explain the concept of To-Gather in 500 words in your own language and mail ot to me.

  3. give examples of essays and books as theoretical background

  4 give ideas or other options for the learning routes

  5. use the social networking on the website

  Tessa Schinkel and Burcu Akkaya will cooperate with Poper (Katarina Pollak to redesign the website. Burcu will do interviews about the festivals, meetings or practice.

  -the use of learning routes in practice inclusive the adaptation of the material to the own education/culture.

  -the making of the film ‘It’s hard to become who you are’ as a follow-up of To-Gather. The preparations are going very well and now we need a lot of money. We hope to start ‘shooting’ in April 2011 after the script, the budget, the production and the casting is finalised. I am trying to involve the networks of CiCe and EMUNI in the implementation of the film in practice related to the learning arrangement of To-Gather. This may be done by research by studenst or tutors or by designing learning material for the film. In the attachment is the demo-synopsis of the film. The two scriptwriters Bouke Mekel and Roeland Dijksterhuis are now working on the script in cooperation with Anja Sinnige (deadline December 2010).

  -the fine tuning of the book ‘Europe makes sense’ (The new title is:’It’s hard to become who you are’), related to the film.

  I did get a lot of good manuscripts and now I have to put it together in one narrative, one book.

  -the organisation and realisation of festivals in:

  Jurmala (17-9)

  Istanbul (22-10)

  Coimbra (7-4?)

  Ljubljana (25-5?)

  The integration of the festivals in Kortrijk, Presov and Miskolc.

  -At the annual CiCe-conference in Barcelona (May) we presented succesfully a symposium and workshops about To-Gather.

  and the conference in Dublin in June 2011 will be the next chance.

  -the finance. Last year there were some problems with the central financial administration of the Hanze University (new digital system), but we hope that it will be better in 2010-2011. I will try to send the money long before the activity/festival will be done. After the holiday at August 16 I will make an overview of the financial budget for each partner and subcontractor together with my new financial assistant Karen Hemmen.

  -application for the International Joint Master ‘To-Gather’ for 2012.

  -implementation of the project in schools inclusive the toolkit by the partners and the subcontractors.

  I would like to give special thanks to the To-Gather-bands Audiofeel and Vanderlinde, the great dancer Margarita Kamjaka, the big artists Jarno Bent and Jeffrey Hoofs and for the good work of Marijke van de Hel, Henk Visser, Tessa Schinkel, Burcu Akkaya, Anja Sinnige, Svenja Hintz, the crew of the film, Duygu Akkya (leading actress in the film) and Jan Doddema (producer).

  Next week I will go to Damascus for the dissemination of To-Gather related to EMUNI and then I will take a break until August 15.

  I would like to thank everybody for the good work and let’s take the next step because

  ‘To-Gather makes sense’