It’s already mid-February, and together with spring, the main event of our organization is approaching rapidly. Since last year, EuroClio has been working on its Annual Conference 2019, which as every year is gathering history educators from all over Europe and beyond to learn and debate about the latest developments in the field. This year, our Annual Conference will take place on April 4 to 7, and it will take us to Gdańsk, Poland, which stands as the perfect setting to learn about our conference’s theme: Bringing History to Life!
This year, we aim at addressing one of the main challenges that teachers are facing on a daily basis, particularly in terms of sparking students’ interest in learning history. How do teachers achieve this goal? We believe that one of the best strategies would be to bring history to life, by looking at the impact of big events in people’s daily life, or by connecting historical events to current affairs.
We are organizing interesting workshops, panel presentations and keynote speakers from renowned and experienced history educators, who will share with us their methods, reflections and techniques to bring history to life. Besides, in order to enhance the impact of this knowledge, we are preparing a bunch of cultural activities that will help us to learn a bit more about Poland and Gdańsk, which were the scenery for many of the XX century’s main historical events.
Sightseeing and movies
Additionally to the variety of cultural activities planned for the four days of conference, we organized a field trip and a movie screening for April 3, the arrival day for most of the participants.
For all the colleagues arriving to Poland during the morning of Wednesday April 3, a field trip to Westerplatte is prepared at 15.00. Westerplatte is a peninsula in Gdańsk, located on the Baltic Sea coast mouth of the Dead Vistula (one of the Vistula delta estuaries), in the Gdańsk harbor channel. From 1926 to 1939 it was the location of a Polish Military Transit Depot (WST), sanctioned within the territory of the Free City of Danzig (now Gdańsk). It is famous for the Battle of Westerplatte, which was the first clash between Polish and German forces during the invasion of Poland and thus the first battle of the European theater of World War II. Therefore, this trip will be a privilege for early birds!
But for those that cannot make it during the morning, a movie screening is scheduled for the evening of the same day. “Warsaw Uprising” is a movie created in 2014 to celebrate the 70 years anniversary of the Warsaw Uprising. The movie is exclusively composed of original footage from 1944, which has been digitally colored. The use of colored images has the purpose of making the footage more appealing for a young public, who might be more motivated in approaching this milestone in Polish history. The screening will be preceded by a small introduction and contextualization, and followed by a discussion on historical truths and how to approach different narrations of the same event.
If you want to participate from these activities, send an email to Alice Modena, project manager at the EuroClio Secretariat, to alice@euroclio.eu, by March 15.
You are kindly invited to keep connected to our channels, website and social media, where more updates will be informed. Do not miss this opportunity of being part of the EuroClio community!
