Is my democracy your democracy?
This is one of the main questions of our project, Changing Democracies, for which we are launching a series of webinars. As part of the project, we collected testimonies from 31 people who openly shared their experiences with democratic transitions, reflecting on big picture questions and recounting daily experiences. The witnesses came from countries across Europe, including Poland, Lithuania, Romania, Greece, Croatia, Czech Republic, Spain, Portugal, Belgium, and the Netherlands. We have used their stories to critically reflect on what democracy means to us today.
Over the past few months, we have developed new learning activities in collaboration with our project partners, tackling themes related to history, democracy and citizenship. Listening to the testimonies of our witnesses about their experience growing up in authoritarian regimes, living through democratic transitions and their reflections on the challenges that we face in our democracies today, we invite young people across Europe to reflect on what democracy means to them. Using activating learning methodologies, we challenge young people to think about what makes them angry about the world today, what influences them in life, and what they expect from a democracy. Each package of learning activities focuses on a driving question like these, which were developed based on recurring themes that we identified in the witness testimonies.
During each webinar, we will present one of the learning activities that you can do with your students, give you the opportunity to work on it and ask for your feedback.
Through the learning activities, we aim to create space for conversation and learning across borders and enrich classroom (and outside of classroom) discussions about democratic transitions. In particular, we aim to:
- Explore how oral history can enrich learning in the history classroom and outside through a variety of activities;
- Share experiences and best practices in teaching about the history of democratic transitions in Europe;
- Receive feedback on the learning activities.
This webinar series is intended for history and citizenship educators, students, activists, professionals from different fields dealing with the topic of democracy, and anyone from the general public interested. The learning activities that will be presented are intended for use in both formal and informal educational settings.
Below, you will find the topic of each webinar, registration links, and dates and times. To access the registration links for multiple webinars, click here.
