The educational programme "Once upon a time... the EU. The Ventotene Manifesto and ideas without borders" aims to open the historical and documentary heritage of the HAEU to citizens, especially the younger generations. The programme aims to raise awareness of the early stages of the European integration process and the principles that inspired the creation of the European Union, as well as to collaborate with their peers for a common goal. The educational programme of the HAEU proposes various activities aimed at learning about and actively reflecting on the beginning of the European integration process, starting from the drafting of the Ventotene Manifesto "For a free and united Europe".
Students approach the history of European integration and the sense of European unity through the use of creative languages and body expression. Through them, students understand and appropriate the values that the process of integration implies, privileging the value of friendship and solidarity in this process. The work will lead participants to know the context of the island of Ventotene and the conditions in which the Manifesto was drafted, as well as to discover the moments of the beginning of the European integration process and the bases and values on which it was founded.
The methodology adopted integrates the teaching of the history of the European Union with the experimentation of different creative languages (musical, visual, manual) and provides for the interaction between different types of materials: nursery rhymes, narrative texts, visual archival documents. Learning through creative languages implies, in this phase, a constant interweaving of fields of experience (body and motor skills, sound and listening, creativity and expression, contact and interaction) that makes the learning of some concepts and passages of history more accessible to children in kindergarten.