On 16 and 17 March, the partners of the Erasmus+ project Shared Memories: Learning from the Past to Build Europe’s Future met in Romania for the official kick-off meeting, hosted by GAMMA. The meeting marked an important first step for a project focused on preserving historical memory, fostering intergenerational learning, and promoting civic engagement across Europe.
The European Institute for Modern Board Games (EIMBG), one of the project partners, took part in the kick-off meeting of Shared Memories: Learning from the Past to Build Europe’s Future, together with the other organisations from Germany, Portugal, Romania, and Ukraine. The project brings together five partners and aims to collect testimonies from older adults, explore young people’s perceptions of history, and later transform these insights into intergenerational educational activities and digital resources.
During the two-day meeting in Romania, the consortium worked on the first key outputs of the project’s initial phase, which focuses on gathering information through testimonies and youth perspectives. In particular, partners developed the methodological guide for conducting interviews with older adults, paying special attention to ethical considerations, inclusion, and data protection compliance. This step is fully aligned with the project’s plan to establish a standardized methodology and ethical framework for collecting oral testimonies and youth opinions in a respectful and consistent way across all partner countries.
The meeting also allowed the partnership to define the interview script that will guide conversations with older adults and to prepare the first version of the survey for young people. These tools will support the project’s broader objective of documenting historical testimonies and analysing young people’s knowledge and perceptions of democracy, authoritarian regimes, conflict, and European history.
For EIMBG, participation in this meeting was especially meaningful, as the organisation brings expertise in board game-based learning, gamification, intergenerational learning, and the design of engaging educational methodologies. The work launched in Romania will provide the foundation for future workshops, digital tools, and educational resources that will help connect younger generations with the lived experiences of older adults in an interactive and meaningful way.
The kick-off meeting in Romania was therefore an important milestone for the whole consortium. With the first methodological tools already underway, the project now moves into its next stage: collecting testimonies, listening to younger generations, and building new learning opportunities that strengthen historical awareness, democratic values, and European identity.