The partners

• The City of Modena - Education Department
• The City of Modena - Progetto Europa
• Direzione didattica 1° circolo di Modena
• Escola Básica 2,3 de Tondela
• Objectif Emploi!

The City of Modena is in charge of managing the territory of Modena, situated in Emilia-Romagna Region (Italy).

The functions of the City Administration are the following:
1. Relationships with citizens and security services
2. Financial resources and patrimony
3. Services for the citizens
4. Urban and territory planing

The City of Modena, throughout its Education Department, is, for more than thirty years, directly in charge of the management of kindergarten (0/3 years old) and of the municipal nursery schools (3/6 years old), for a total of twenty-two schools. It also takes a part in the requalification process concerning all the primary schools of the territory, especially public schools (schools depending on the National Education Ministry), through training activities or other services set up for the teachers, as well as re-organisation activities concerning scholar institutes management.

The City of Modena has a proved experience in innovation and pedagogical experimentation field, and has been a laboratory for didactical experiences for many years, taking a great part in the primary schools enhancement and evolution process on a local and national level.

Besides the teaching of foreign languages, sciences, mathematics and physical activities, a special attention has been given to music teaching, which is considered as a language transversal to other types of languages and expressions (corporeal, expressive, mental etc.), and has a great influence on the emotional and relational life of children, which makes of it a fertile field from the pedagogical point of view.

For more than twenty years music has been taught by a group of teachers with specific competencies in the field, who have been working directly with children, without the mediation of the section-teacher, even if a closed collaboration with him/her is fundamental, as well as with children parents.

Main orientations activities are the following:
· education to audition sensibility and sound world exploration
· singing and use of voice
· education to rhythm and dance
· use of instruments and musical production
· music listening and knowledge

The Education Department of the City of Modena has already had an experience in international collaboration, in the framework of a European project called "Pintors", financed by the Socrates-Comenius programme, concerning graphics and pictorial education for pupils from three to fourteen years old, through the discovery of contemporaneous pintors like Mirò and Picasso.

Progetto Europa is the European and International Affairs Department of the City of Modena. It provides the technical assistance to the other City departments for the planing and implementation of projects financed by the European Commission. In this framework of activities, it gives information concerning European politics and financial opportunities, organises training sessions, helps project managers to plan financial proposals and then to implement the activities by monitoring the project implementation, in particular by managing contacts with the European Commission and writing the different financial and activities reports.

Marco Polo described a bridge, stone after stone.
- What is the stone which carries the entire bridge? - asked Kublai Kan
- The bridge isn't carried by this stone or that stone, - answered Marco,
- But by the whole arch line that they form.
Kublai Kan remained in silence, thinking. Then added:
- Why do you tell me about the stones? It's just the arch that interests me.
Polo answered: - without stones there isn't arch.
(Italo Calvino, The invisible towns, Turin, 1972)

The Direzione didattica 1° circolo di Modena is one of the eight didactical Directions ("Circoli") of the Modena Province, in charge of co-ordinating the nursery schools of the territory (6-11 years old). The didactical Directions depend directly on the National Education Ministry - Regional Direction of Emilia-Romagna.

The main pedagogical orientations of the didactical Direction are based on the education to life in common according to principles of democracy, aiming at making pupils participating to the creation of a European democracy based on values like tolerance, pluralism, respect of ethnic minorities and differences. Among the priorities set up in order to reflect these educational principles, the didactical Direction aims at deeply analysing cultural and historical aspects of Europe and Italy, allowing the acquisition of technical, scientific and cultural competencies that form the present language of modernity, as well as making children aware of cultural and social existing differences, richness, inequalities.

The didactical Direction has worked for several years according to this point of view, trying to connect between them different pedagogical aspects that form together a network offering reciprocal complementarity and connections. These exploration orientations are the following:
- the words (in its several aspects, written and spoken) leading to the creation of the "Reading Project"
- technical languages, like foreign languages and computerising
- physical education
- art traditions, in particular the creation of the "Theatre Project" and of the "Amavi-Muse Project" concerning music education

With the "Amavi-Muse Project" the didactical Direction created a new specific professional figure for a music teacher in charge of organising music activities with youngest children (6-8 years old) according to the following orientations:
- musical alphabetisation
- technical assistance to music teachers for music activity planing
- training and auto-training activities for teachers
- collaboration with other organisations of the territory: Centre of Educational Documentation (CDE) of Modena, musical college, other didactical Directions of the Province.

The Portuguese scholar organisation, compulsory until fifteen years old, is divided into three cycles:
· 6-9 years old: 1st CEB
· 10-11 years old: 2nd CEB
· 12-15 years old: 3rd CEB

The school Escola Básica 2,3 de Tondela assembles children from both the late cycles, from 10 to 15 years old. In the framework of the "Do Re Mi … File" project, the youngest will be involved in the activities.

As every public school, it depends directly on the National Education Ministry, but has a large autonomy to manage its own "projects" in complementarity with scholar national cursus. In the framework of these special projects, pupils analyse more deeply certain themes and participate actively to the implementation of specific activities such as the school radio, the chore, the organisation of laboratories for photography, astronomy, playroom, the creation of a club for environment or sport competitions. The "Do Re Mi … File" project will be one of these experimental projects.

Objectif Emploi! is an association of Saint Denis (France) aiming at promoting territorial economic development and social cohesion enhancement, in particular through the mobilisation of all local strength and resources (public administrations, enterprises, associations, inhabitants etc.). Its activities concern several fields, from professional training to assistance for job research, from helping partnerships setting up to financing research, from information delivering to innovating projects enhancing. Enterprises as well as public administrations or even inhabitants may access to its services.

Among the different activities carried out with the objective of enhancing social integration, Objectif Emploi! collaborates with extra-scholar centres of the territory for the organisation of cultural and free time activities for children aged from 9 to 13 years old.

The association has set up besides groups of work and exchange of competencies, in the framework of the "Mille et un savoirs" section ("Thousand and one knowledges"), and one of these groups gather professionals of music and computerised music. The aim of this section is to make people with complementary or not competencies or knowledges get in touch in order to allow exchange of knowledges and to create possible synergies. The approach aims at bringing out existing resources in order to create initiatives and events in the town.

Objectif Emploi! will experiment the "Do Re Mi … File" project in a extra-scholar context and use specific musical competencies coming from the association Ville Miroir de Ville collaborating with "Mille et un savoirs". Through this initiative Objectif Emploi! wants to promote a new pedagogical approach at a local level that will be then illustrated and proposed to the scholar institutes after its experimentation and consolidation.

This project has been financed with the support of the European Community in the framework of the Scocrates programme.

The content of this project doesn't reflect necessarily the position of the European Community and doesn't involve its responsibility.