1. “Adopt Your Heritage”
Project Newsletter
Issue 1 – May 2010
Project financed by the European Commission
www.adyourhe.com
Increasing awareness and encouraging active participation in understanding different cultures.
2nd Project Meeting - Cittá di Castello, ITALY – 22-25 April 2010
The second meeting of the project ADHER – Adopt Your
Heritage was held in Città di Castello at Villa Montesca and
was attended by 40 participants coming from Turkey,
Romania, Greece, Slovenia and Lithuania. The participants
were welcomed by the representatives of the Centro Studi e
Formazione Villa Montesca, the Italian partner of this Learning
Partnership project funded by the Grundvig Programme.
During the first day partners and learners presented their own
A moment of the meeting in Villa Montesca
institutions and countries focusing on their culture heritages. In
particular, the hosting partner supplied detailed information on
the Region’s cultural heritage stressing the issue of public awareness as regards its protection
presenting the educational tools used to improve the knowledge of cultural heritage and its role in local
development. The meeting was also an opportunity for exchanging good practices and training methods
of the participating countries.
Partners’ internal meeting in the library of Villa Montesca
This project has been funded with support from the European Commission.
This 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

2. The activities in agenda were organised with the view of alternating the partners’ interventions with social
and cultural activities with the participation of staff and learners.
Therefore, discussions and debates regarding the project’s activities and its steps were spaced out with
guided tours to historical and artistic Umbrian sites. The Villa, were the Centro Studi is housed, belonged
to Baron and Baroness Franchetti and is a heritage site since when the owners organised the first school
for the farmers’ children who could not attend State schools due to the distance or other difficulties.
These schools became workshops for educational experiments, which brought about some revolutionary
innovations based on the observation of Nature and the use of language as a tool for social dialogue.
In 1905 Baroness Alice called Maria Montessori to organise with her a seminar, which gave life to the
first publication of the Method for Scientific Pedagogy, universally known as the Montessori Method.
Today the Villa has been fully restored and in 2001, one hundred years after that first experience, a
number of educational institutions, together with the Local Authority of Città di Castello, formed an
educational and professional training organisation to continue, in the spirit of the Franchetti institutions,
the research and the experimentation on new teaching methods.
Both partners and learners of the project visited Palazzo
Albizzini Foundation with its library and photographic archive
where all the documentation regarding the works of Alberto Burri
and its bibliography are kept.
Participants went also on a guided tour to Assisi were they
learnt how the Region’s cultural heritage is managed and
valorised.
The meeting held in Città di Castello was an opportunity for all
partners to share the project’s main objective, therefore
improving reciprocal understanding and dialogue among
different cultures as well as the level of respect people have for
their own and other
Palazzo del Podestà, Città di Castello
nation’s cultural heritage.
The ADHER ‘ADopt Your HERitage’ project was also presented to
students attending the post-graduate course ‘Registrar ’ organised
by the Centro Studi. The course raised a considerable level of
interest among the students in view of their possible future
involvement in the project’s activities in order to create important
synergies with a project of such an important international level
and acquire an in-depth knowledge of both the sector’s issues and
cultural interaction.
The project’s partners and learners will meet again in mid-June at
the Mewcat, Milos Educational Womens Collaboration for
Activities in Tourism in Milos, Greece.
Project partners in Assisi
This project has been funded with support from the European Commission.
This 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