According to the EU youth strategy 2019-2027, gender-based discrimination still affects many young people, especially young women. Equal opportunities and access to rights need to be ensured for young people of all genders including nonbinary and LGBTQI+ young people. The Strategy recognizes that education remains a key for active citizenship, inclusive society and employability and therefore should focus more on transferable skills, student-centered learning and non-formal education. Nowadays the issue of fighting discrimination through diversity acceptance is crucial for an evolving and modern education system but also for an open-minded society. SEN and SEND students, students members of the LGBTQI community or just students with minor diversity and acceptance issues consist a high percentage of the schools’ dynamics, especially in teen and preteen age. Body shaming as a means of self rejection is also a situation that highly affects teenagers and preteenagers and leads to severe psychological and behavioral issues and needs to be addressed in a discrete and contemporary way. Currently in schools there is a lot that needs to be done to reach the desired level of recognition and acceptance, including self-acceptance. Art is a means that can be healing and can help students realize matters in an easier more simple and more comprehensive manner. While it is well documented that art can be used in education, its connection with technology, science and contemporary social issues has not been highly exploited, especially in the participating countries. Art is like an always evolving organism and creates emotions and creative thoughts and when it is accompanied with gaming it can activate the interest in education and social matters. The motivation behind this program is to address the issue of diversity in teen and preteen schools in an exciting, innovative and effective way, that combines technology, science, art and gamification. The program should be funded because it brings together schools from different countries that have similar diversity acceptance issues (Greece, Turkey) and gives them the opportunity to increase their scientific and artistic potential while dealing with the matter issue of diversity. It will also lead to important results that can be used by other schools for the same purposes: a STEAM on diversity curriculum, an application that can help students realize and love mathematics (MTC), films about diversity and an application that connects art to the decrease of body shaming (ROM). The funding is important not only for the connection and the mobility of the participants but also for the development and use of technology that is vital for the scientific and technological part. It should also be funded because it will open a path for future projects that will connect art with and expand creative thinking and knowledge capacity of the students.
To make schools students realize through practice how important diversity is and how everyone (including SEN or SEN(D) students, people of different race and/or religion) is unique, beautiful and should be accepted as that. To make students and teachers gain a different perspective of the human body and gender and realize that beauty and art is not about models but about uniqueness To use STEAM for Diversity and to be trained in the STEAM framework. To realize the use of Art (especially cinema and painting) in STEAM education. To use Art as a tool for the empowerment of inclusion. The 4 main results of the project are: Curriculum: a full curriculum for the use of STEAM FOR Diversity, will be available online for the participating countries and will be tested in practice before it is published. The curriculum will provide immediate support to teachers, school leaders and other teaching professions and will also promote interest and the STEAM framework. Self Made Cameras: Film-making is the art of physics. Optics, mechanics and wave theory combine with storytelling and acting in order to create the film. Through a series of workshops students will learn how the camera works and will create their own cameras with simple materials (lenses, mirrors, simple sensors, a wooden box, etc.) Films in diversity: Students watch the movies “The eight day” “YO TAMBIEN”, and "AMERICAN HISTORY X", discuss how diversity is presented in the movies and make their own short film -with the help of experts- about diversity. In this way they create cameras, they watch movies about diversity and they create films combining in an ideal way Inclusion and diversity in Education and promoting interest and excellence in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) and the STEAM approach. Maths to cubist painting – MTC / Application and digital paintings: Cubism is the observation of an object from different angles at the same time, which is moving around an object to observe it from all its parts which will merge into one image. A definition extremely similar to the one of critical thinking, an approach very important in STEAM projects. A series of workshops in mathematics and their relation to painting, that leads to the development of an application for mobile phones that will create cubist paintings of the body, based on mathematics, in order to reduce body shaming and make everyone realize that each body is a unique work of art while working on Science and Mathematics. Mirror Of Diversity (MOD): An application that transforms mirroring faces of students to faces of different races. It can help students realize how much people of different races are the same promoting inclusion and diversity in Education while it connects them even more with science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) and the STEAM approach.
