A walk down the hill: How the Archives’ educational programme got its start
In 2013, on the invitation of the Archives’ director Dieter Schlenker, a class of primary school children from the nearby Jacopo Salviati Primary School walked down the via Bolognese from ‘la Lastra’ to spend the morning at the Historical Archives of the European Union (HAEU) at Villa Salviati. Their visit launched the Archives’ educational programme, an initiative that teaches the concepts of archives and memory through activities and hands-on engagement with archival facsimiles from the European institutions and other holdings.
Striving to make the history of European integration and the values of the European Union accessible to students of all ages, from kindergarten to high school, the programme aims to facilitate students’ understanding of European citizenship, the European institutions, and their place and active role in shaping the future contours of the Union.
Twelve years on, the programme has become well-known on the Florentine territory and welcomes more than 1000 students to the Archives annually. Its programme of workshops, included in Florence’s official catalogue of civic education initiatives and tailored for every educational level, reaches full capacity each year, booked by teachers from across the metropolitan area. In addition, the programme has developed long-standing pedagogical relationships with schools from other Italian regions and engages—both in person and remotely—with classes located in countries such as Spain, France, Greece, and Slovenia.
An ever-evolving approach
The Archives’ educational programme is designed and implemented by an educational programme coordinator, hand-in-hand with archivists and a rotating team of trainers. The latter, who play a very active role in the programme, are selected for their interest and experience in education and European politics and identity. Their academic backgrounds span a wide array of disciplines, including contemporary history, European studies, European law, and art history.
The educational offer is in continuous evolution, thanks also to adherence by external partners such as the European Parliament Former Members’ Association and the Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Firenze. For example, one recently developed course introduces students to the workings of the European institutions, while most now explore the multiple facets of European citizenship. Moreover, as part of their engagement with archival sources, participants themselves create material testimonies, such as drawings, brief individual and collective interviews and written texts, which the Archives selects and preserves as part of the European Civic Education Programme (ECEP) collection.
Exploring how we teach
This exhibition aims to guide viewers through the research and creative processes behind the educational workshops. It also seeks to showcase how students express the impact of participating in the programme.
The first section, Dialogues, illustrates how we engage young children through puppets and play, constructing an imaginary dialogue between early European federalist Ernesto Rossi and the class.
Next, in Artefacts, we discuss our use of ‘family objects,’ an exercise that serves not only to connect each student’s personal story to the broader history of the European Union, but also brings to the forefront the role of archives and archival work in preserving historical memory.
The subsequent section, entitled Metaphors, takes up an approach we use to adapt the technical language of the European institutions to our upper level students: the metaphor of the table and the importance of dialogue and communication in EU decision-making.
The final chapter on Citizenship examines the teaching and learning of European citizenship as a dynamic and interactive process and presents how young people imagine the future of the EU and the meanings of being European. Here, we also introduce the European Civic Education Programme (ECEP) collection at the Historical Archives, an archival fonds that transmits our objectives and experience through texts, art and audiovisual material.
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