Using Heritage in Adult Education

Open Research objectives/practices

Making the outputs of research, including publications, data, software and other research materials freely accessible.

Using open materials to decrease the cost of education and/or increase the sustainability of (public) investments in education.

Capitalizing on the unique open aspects of open educational resources to reinvent course design, empower learners, and apply innovative ways of teaching.

Introduction

The Center for Religion and Heritage has engaged in Open Education through three Erasmus Plus adult education projects, in which we brought out research in heritage into dialogue with arts and community organizations with the aim of pioneering new methods of adult education with disadvantaged populations. These included REBELAH (Religions, Beliefs, and Laicity in Cultural Heritage to Foster Social Inclusion in Adult Trainings) 2020-22; LEGACI (Legislative Theatre for Inclusive Heritage) 2021-23 and most recently MIRETAGE (European Pathways to Minority Religious Heritage) 2023-26. For the purposes of this award, we are focussing on REBELAH, the final outputs of which are still being rolled out.

Motivation

REBELAH was built around Open Education principles and involved the active collaboration of researchers, creative professionals and adult learners with the aim of creating new methods in using heritage for adult education. Concretely, these projects benefited minority communities in Amsterdam, as well as disadvantaged youth in Friesland. One concrete impact has been that our pioneering Muslim heritage trail in Amsterdam led to the formation of a further Erasmus Plus project–MIRETAGE– that was funded by the Dutch National Committee in 2023. We also obtained an agreement to publish a book version of our key output with the University of Groningen Press.

Lessons learned

One institutional barrier to such Open Science work is that it is not well supported by university systems such as PURE. While PURE automatically registers individual research grants, it does not register Erasmus Plus in the same way. A supporting factor has been the creation within the Faculty of Religion, Culture and Society of several research centers, of which the Center for Religion and Heritage is one. This center provided the organizational basis and justification for our participation in REBELAH.

URLs, references and further information

The concrete deliverables of this Open Education project were:

1. Two open-access handbooks for use by adult educators, downloadable here:
   https://www.rebelah.org
2. These are being transformed into permanent, higher quality professional educational handbooks by University of Groningen Press, due for publication in 2025.
3. Muslim heritage trail in Amsterdam, available in an interactive online site: https://izi.travel/nl/5d63-islam-in-amsterdam/nl
4. Pilot project with Fries Museum and Storytelling Center Amsterdam: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I3637CW6gn8