A workshop titled Poetry and Music - The legacy of Blues Music in Blues Poetry, organized by dr. Pop Titus and dr. Lászlóffy Zsolt of Partium Christian University, Romania, took place on November 9, 2023. The workshop focused on the interconnectedness between a musical pattern (call-and-response pattern) and a poetic genre (blues poetry). It introduced how blues music emerged as a genre due to the appropriation of African heritage and how this music influenced the Harlem Renaissance movement. The students listened to blues music and read selected poems, discussed the impact the music had on the new poetic genre of blues poetry, and were able to learn how strongly can a particular style of music impact a whole socio-cultural movement.

A second workshop related to British traditions, titled British Christmas symbols – hands-on-activities: Christmas decorations, took place on December 5, 2023, organized by dr. Iwona Gryz of Radom University, Poland. The workshop sought to consolidate the students’ knowledge of British culture through different hands-on activities and the Multi-Sensory Teaching Method. While listening to and singing popular British Christmas songs, the students made Christmas decorations that portrayed the chosen elements of British culture in teams, their different senses being engaged throughout the activity.

On December 4, 2023, dr. Iwona Gryz from Radom University, Poland, led an online workshop titled Exploring British culture: "Christmas Carol" by Charles Dickens. The workshop explored elements of British culture centered around the Christmas time through Charles Dickens’ novella A Christmas Carol by using various ICT tools, such as Kahoot!, Learning Apps, AnswerGarden, and more. The students were able to learn about British culture and traditions and at the same time revise different aspects of grammar. Their final task was oriented towards their problem-solving skills and teamwork - through the Five Cards Flick Stories tool, the students had to come up with their own solutions as to how they would change the main character of the story, Ebenezer Scrooge.

Dr. Iwona Gryz from Radom University, Poland, led an online workshop titled Story-telling with the use of ICT on November 30, 2023. The workshop introduced the students to the interactive tool StoryBird, used to create short stories, comics, poetry and more, online. The focus was on how the students can improve their foreign language skills through the technique of story-telling, as well as to enhance their knowledge of British culture and literature. At the end the students worked in groups, using StoryBird to create their own short stories, showcasing their teamwork and creativity.

On October 16, 2023, Mgr. Ľubica Durcová from Gymnázium in Myjava, Slovakia, led an interdisciplinary workshop on the topic of Comics. The workshop was aimed to make the students see the appeal of telling stories in picture form, to teach them the history of the medium and how it adapted through time to serve the needs of the readers, and it paid special attention to superhero characters.

The workshop consisted of numerous discussions and activities related to specific superheroes, examples of picture stories ranging from Ancient Greece to contemporary memes and humor, and films based on comic books. As a final activity, the students were tasked with making their own short comics in groups and presenting it to their classmates, exercising both their creative and cooperative skills.

On Thursday, 28 September, we had two online workshops led by professor Fella Benabed from Badji Mokhtar - Annaba University, Algeria. The workshops were focused on two human rights activists, and were titled Nelson Mandela: The Hero Within and Malala Yousafzai: Empowerment through education.

The first workshop presented the South African activist and politician Nelson Mandela through the concept of PsyCap, defined as an individual’s positive state of development, consisting of four elements: hope, efficacy, resilience, and optimism, commonly abbreviated as HERO. The students were made familiar with how these qualities manifested in Mandela’s actions throughout his political life, and were then encouraged to identify and discuss how these qualities relate to specific quotes by Mandela.

The second workshop discussed the Pakistani education activist Malala Yousafzai. The students were introduced to the various factors that prevent girls across the world from accessing formal schooling, to Malala’s story, and her mission to fight for equal rights and to education for all children. The students discussed the advantages that female empowerment through education has on society, and after reading a summary of The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, they were tasked to consider how they, as individuals, can contribute to the ideals the Declaration represents in their daily lives and in their communities.

Professor Fella Benabed of Badji Mokhtar - Annaba University, Algeria, led two online workshops on June 20, 2023, titled Heal the Planet through Art and Be a Colibri: The importance of Nature Conservation. Both workshops focused on issues related to nature conservation and climate change, connecting the subjects of art, culture, and civic education.

The first workshop worked with Fabrice Monteiro’s "The Prophecy" photographs and Michael Jackson’s "Earth Song", while the second used Conservation International’s "Mother Nature" video and the indigenous peoples’ Colibri legend. Through a series of communicative tasks, the participants discussed the role of art in raising awareness about nature conservation and climate change, the importance of them in their lives, and how human activity impacts the climate. The workshop also helped them reflect on their own personal responsibility in preserving nature and reducing the pace of climate change, and to identify different strategies that will enable them to do so.

On June 20, 2023, Mgr. Diana Magátová from Gymnázium Myjava, Slovakia, led a workshop titled Rip van Winkle and American Revolution. The workshop started with a warm-up activity, in which students created short poems in teams. To show how history and each author’s experiences influence literature and how art mirrors reality, the discussion moved to analyzing Washington Irving’s Rip van Winkle and the key terms surrounding the American Revolution. The students worked directly with the literary text, analyzing its themes and ideas and looking for any similarities between the text and real historical events. Afterwards, they created posters representing the world of Rip van Winkle.

On May 25, 2023, Mgr. Miron Breznočšák from Gymnázium Andreja Kmeťa, Banská Štiavnica, Slovakia, led an online workshop titled Model Activities on the Subject Regional History and Education. He presented model activities for an interdisciplinary school subject of Regional Education and focused on how any town or a region might serve as a model of microhistory, using the town of Banská Štiavnica as an example, introducing its heritage, history, and traditions. Both the workshop and the Regional Education subject showed the applicability and variability of the presented methods for different periods and environments, fields of studies, and different types of learners.

A workshop titled Film Soundtracks, led by Mgr. Ľubica Durcová from Gymnázium Myjava, Slovakia, took place on May 24, 2023. The students were introduced to the history of music in film, how this music is used to manipulate our emotions, and how different film genres use different types of sound.

The students first listened to specific scores from popular films, in pairs and then in groups,  trying to identify what film the music was from and discussing what type of emotion it seeks to elicit. This was followed by a discussion of the students' own favorite film soundtracks, making lists of them in groups and creating posters for concerts consisting of those tracks, exercising both their knowledge of films and their creativity.