Creative Connections is a three-year, EU-funded collaborative research project which began in 2012 and involves six European universities and twenty five schools in England, Spain, Finland, Ireland, the Czech Republic and Portugal (University of Roehampton; University of Barcelona, University of Lapland, Charles University, National College of Art and Design and Instituto Politécnico de Viana do Castelo). The project has explored ways of increasing transnational understanding and what it means to be ‘European’ with over 800 young people and children. This innovative project focused on giving new emphasis to the ‘voice of the child’ through art, citizenship and digital media.

The project has developed a website: www.creativeconnexions.eu and central to this is an online gallery of images from current, practicing European artists to stimulate creative discussion and practical projects in participating primary and secondary schools. The project ‘connected’ schools online via quad blogs within the website – within these blogs pupils could post images and ideas relating to the work they were doing for Creative Connections; pupils also posted descriptions of their work/influences and sought responses from peers in other countries.  To enable blogging communication in five languages, automatic online translation software was used. This multilingual facility aimed to offer pupils from the partner European countries an opportunity to communicate through both visual and text-based multilingual “voices”. The consortium worked with teachers to facilitate an active inter-country dialogue with a focus on enhancing an understanding of related and diverse perspectives of European citizenship. The project is now in its final year and main research phase has finished. Partners in each country have been assessing data: images, text, interviews, observations and surveys in order to examine the themes, issues and outcomes of the past two years.

This symposium (one of two) presents perspectives relating to the context of European Identity at a time of political upheaval and global recession both key themes apparent in the images, dialogue and text responses during the research phase in schools. The Spanish team presents an evaluation of the inclusive nature of art education in relation to immigration and the status of immigrants in one Spanish city; The English team propose a consideration of what it means to be a European Citizen in 2014 – the term is politically tense and the idea of reaching consensus on its meaning appears to be receding as the recession ‘bites’ economies across the member states. The Czech contribution introduces Deleuze´s interpretation of Foucault´s spatial concepts of socio-culture and focuses on how regimes of visibility and expressivity operate on different levels. The Portuguese team discusses the ways in which this research facilitated high quality debate and discussion of controversial themes (political, social, economic) and how this was underpinned by the use of art practice. The Finnish contribution considers the constructive and processual nature of subject positions and overlapping, embedded identities as starting points and relating to contemporary art. The Case Utsjoki, working with native Sami people, provides a voice of borderland regions within the special conditions of northern Finland.