E-SHAHRAZAD: Innovative Approach in Adult Education : Digital Storytelling in Intergenerational Learning Project
Programme: Erasmus+ Strategic Partnership for Adult Education
Project Partners: Association Culturelle Des Jeunes Turcs De Bar Le Duc (FR), CAI – Conversas Associacao Internacional (PR), Loughborough Unıversity (UK), Innovative Thinking Lab. (TR), Associazione Culturale EduVita E.T.S. (IT)
Beyond time, place and extent, Shahrazad whispers her tales in monarch Shahryar’s and the night’s ear in a deconstructive manner which throws all the limits of learned reality into disorder. Tales are all she has in a fight for her life. The tale leads to another one, as the night to another… The tale goes bush in the night. The tale is seeded within another, blossoms, yields fruit, becomes sweet and flows. Ripening by day as the time grows and unfolds. Shahrazad, which narrates expertly and gravely the transitions from state to state and which also blends the fragrances, colors and ornaments of the most beautiful Eastern lands with the one thousand and one forms of human nature, has become a masterpiece that deeply influenced all Western literature from the moment it was translated to French by Antoine Galland in 1704. So much so that it is thought to be one of the pioneers of the romantic movement in West. Voltaire, Chaucer, Montesquieu, Daniel Defoe, H. C. Andersen, Oscar Wilde, O. Henry, Edgar Allan Poe, John Bart and Calvino are only some of the great minds who were inspired by the Thousand and One Nights. Gabriel García Márquez and Jorge Luis Borges had stated that it was the most important source of inspiration for them.
As we bring the E-Shahrazad Project to life, Thousand and One Nights bring about a new beginning for the understanding and reproduction of the masterful wordsmith that is the Eastern culture. In order to find our roots and communicate with them through the current mentality and intellect and for finding meaning in our existence, we have to go back to the point of origin. Right there, we will come across the oral lore of the East and with our new understanding of the past, we will apply a whole new approach to the construction of the future. Each step being a port of call on our journey we will embark on with the E-Sharazad Project.
The E-Shahrazad Project has been developed by the Innovative Thinking Lab. as a part of the Erasmus+ Strategic Partnership for Adult Education programme with a consortium of partners from France, England, Italy and Portugal and the support of French National Agency. Inspired by the Thousand and One Night, the purpose of the project is to bring the joint culture to life in the digital environment via the use of Digital Storytelling in order to support intergenerational learning in the area of adult education and the perseverance of oral tradition. In this context, in the course of the 2 years of the project, a methodology on “intergenerational learning and digital storytelling” in adult education, along with a practical guide and educational material will be developed. Being a project partner, the Storytelling Academy at Loughborough University will provide training of the trainer workshops in England and Italy to a total of 24 selected participants from all project partner countries. After the training of the trainers, workshops will be held at the national level for 55+ adults and 13-25 year old young people who will produce 5 digital stories per country, which sums up to 25 digital stories in total.
At the course of the project, an additional guide that will be a compilation of the best practices of digital storytelling all around the world will be prepared. As the project comes to an end, our partner organization in France will host an “International Digital Storytelling Festival” for being able to both share the end products of E-Sharazad and have the opportunity to acknowledge many other noteworthy works in the field of digital storytelling.