From 2nd to 5th of April 2015 the first Kick-off meeting in the EuroClio project “History that connects the Balkans. Rethinking History Education? 21st Century Approaches” took place in Skopje, Macedonia. Members of History Teachers Associations from Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Kosovo, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia and Slovenia were invited to participate in order to discuss organizational issues with the development of regional website and with preparations for the summer school in Mrkonjić Grad. EuroClio was represented by Jonathan Even-Zohar (director), Judith Geerling (project manager) and by Ivan Markovic (trainee). Organizer of this meeting was Macedonian History Teachers Association headed by its president and EuroClio board member, Mire Mladenovski.
During the meeting two successful workshops were organised. The topic of the first workshop was the programme of the upcoming summer school. After a fruitful discussion, it was agreed that summer school will be heavily focused on topics such as cultural history, remembrance and glocal history (global and local history). In addition to this, there will be several on-site learning activities such as visits to archaeological sites, museums, former concentration camps and memorial sites. Following day, another productive workshop was held. The workshop topic was the development of a regional website for history, citizenship and cultural heritage education. Following a series of discussion participants presented the initial concept of the website and agreed to further discuss via Skype challenges such as language.
Overall, the meeting in Skopje was successful in reaching its aims, as well as it provided the capacity to continue with the presented projects. The participants know that there is still work to do and they will work actively in the coming period to overcome necessary challenges before the summer school in Mrkonjić Grad.
