Ignalina district municipality public library administered and, together with 6 partners representing 5 countries, implemented the international project ERASMUS+ KA2 cooperation partnerships „EU-READ&ART. The first European digital library of book trailers and adults’ creative expressions”.
This project addressed the teaching and learning challenges of adults with low general literacy, language and digital literacy skills. A common problem nowadays is functional illiteracy, when middle-aged people lose their reading skills and motivation to learn while going through the routine of daily activities.
In order to bring older people together for joint learning activities, the reader clubs were created in all partner organizations. Adult educators not only organized book discussions, but also taught how to create trailers for the books they read – short films promoting the books. These innovative reading club activities help adult participants to develop general literacy, cultural, language and digital skills. They developed skills and competences that strengthen creativity. The participants “transferred” the emotions and thoughts caused by the books they read into images by photographing, filming, and drawing. Some of them even became “actors”, involving friends and family members in creative activities. CapCut, Canva apps helped to combine separate images, footage, texts, and music into a compact book trailer.
During the activities of the project, an attractive platform for book trailers was created – https://europeanbooktrailers.eu/ , in which all project partners uploaded 554 book trailers they created. These trailers reveal the diversity and beauty of European literature, and the partners created them in different ways: in English or in their native languages. In addition, on this platform everybody can find training materials created by partners and used during international training activities: the adult education institution ACADEMIA (Slovenia) prepared methodological material for creating book trailers “Let’s book trailer” (how to create book trailers), JUMP – Gioventù in Risalto – a non-governmental organization in Italy was the main technical partner and developed the training material “EU citizenship education for adult learners”, the non-governmental organization SOLUTION: Solidarité & Inclusion from France taught creativity through body expressions and created the material “Theatre as a powerful tool in adult education”, and the Greek Institute of Culture (Athens) revealed the connection between culture and literature – teaching material “Culture, creativity and innovation in adult learning”.
The project platform https://europeanbooktrailers.eu/ contains 330 blogs on the reading, read books, project activities and reading laboratories topics, created by project participants. In the photo gallery everybody can find photos of all the activities that took place: international project partner meetings, international training activities, reading clubs, reading laboratories.
The monitoring carried out during the project showed that it was possible to influence the general level of literacy of the participants, improve language and digital knowledge skills. 25 percent of participants said that reading has become their daily routine, 56,3 percent described the experience of collaboration and knowledge sharing as “very enriching”. Participants responses indicated a range of learning levels, from those who had acquired new basic skills (43.8%) to those who expressed a desire to learn more (18.8%). 87.5% of participants described the impact of the project as “very positive” for motivation to read and create videos.
We are confident that these book clubs and book trailers activities can be implemented in any adult or children education institution, including public libraries and schools, in any country. The example is JUMP, project partner from Italy, Soverato town, which now takes part in Italian project with very similar activities and are using project platform. Thanks to a local spin off project titled “LET’S BOOK TRAILERS. READING, CINEMA AND MAGIC AT SCHOOL” which is ongoing at the moment in Soverato, thanks to a national fund granted to JUMP, the Italian partner is adding more books of the Italian literature, classical, national or local and British and German literature. The project involves a network of teachers of Italian, history, arts, English and German and librarians of public libraries and bookshops of the city.
We invite everybody to read, create, and we will upload your book trailers on the book trailer platform – the European Digital Book Trailers Library.
