The final meeting of the participants of the Erasmus+ project “Culture knowledge and language competencies as a means to develop the 21st century skills” was held in Časlav, the Czech Republic from 26-28 July 2021. After three years of work, extended due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the Consortium of partner countries – Croatia, Latvia, Slovenia, Romania, the Czech Republic and Poland, has come to the end of its long-standing collaboration in EU projects.

The meeting was organised by the project partner Vyšší odborná škola, Střední průmyslová škola a Obchodní akademie Čáslav (the Czech Republic) and it was attended by the representatives of all other project partners – Tourism and Catering School Dubrovnik (Croatia), Turiba University (Latvia), Ekonomska šola Murska Sobota (Slovenia), Universitatea Sapientia din Cluj-Napoca (Romania) and Pro Scientia Publica (Poland).

Turiba University was represented by the head of the Department of Languages, Professor Dr.paed. Ineta Luka and the English teacher, Mg.comp.sc. Sundars Vaidesvarans.

During the meeting, the project aims and outcomes, set at the beginning of the project, have been analyzed:

• European cultural heritage and skills development course in English,
• Culture-based multilingual blended-learning language course for adult learners in 9 languages – Croatian, Czech, French, German, Hungarian, Latvian, Polish, Romanian and Slovenian,
• Lifelong Learning Guidelines meant for developing adult learners’ 21st century skills.

Adult learners were invited to share their experiences concerning the courses created and piloted to help us with some additional face-to-face feedback in order to make final improvements to the courses. Guest speakers represented the following target groups: adult population, adult learners with health/mental issues, senior learners, learners from remote areas, immigrants. Due to the pandemic restrictions, some of the speakers joined the meeting online via Google Meet conferencing option.

The course is based on Europe’s rich cultural heritage. Thus, in addition to developing language and intercultural competence, future course participants will be exposed to broad cultural knowledge and will raise their cultural knowledge and awareness.

We hope that the outputs created will find its implementation in the broader public and will enrich the study process of Turiba University as well.

The participants would like to thank the Czech colleagues for welcome reception and hospitality.

The learning platform with the courses created is available on: http://e-culture.eu/

Further detailed information regarding the project, its objectives and outcomes can be found on the project webpage on: www.culture-language.eu

Dr.paed., Professor Ineta Luka
Head of the Department of Languages
The Project manager and researcher

This project has been funded with support from the European Commission. This publication [communication] reflects the views only of the author, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.