In the knowledge based society cultural institutions have important mission to achieve and their role as learning environments for both children and adults needs to be enhanced. Although the contemporary dynamics require from cultural institutions to act in a pro-active, flexible and innovative way, many of them have difficulties to adapt and fully accomplish their educative potential for the communities and population they serve. Constructed on rigid structures, following traditional methods and highly hierarchical decision making process, cultural institutions need to undergo structural changes, based on modern management methods and organizational development techniques. And more importantly, it has to re-define relations with adult publics and to re-position as community learning centers.

The project aims to strengthen the learning dimensions of cultural organizations (archives, libraries, museums, cultural centers) by adapting and developing specific adult education methods and providing techniques and instruments for organizational development and management.
In the first phase partners conduct a participatory research on adult education methods used by cultural institutions from the participating countries. Another research will investigate organizational process inside cultural institutions. In the next phase a serious of adult education methods will be developed, integrating the results of the research.
Cultural workers will have the opportunity to test and assess the value of the educational the materials participating in national training sessions.
In the end the results will be exploited in a training of trainers.

The outputs comprise:

Research report: Bulgaria;

Research report: five countries;

Educational materials;

10 training sessions and seminars;

A Grundtvig course;

A web page.

During the project life Grundtvig in-service training course “CONNECTION: Adult Education in Cultural Organisations” will be organized by and will take place in Izmir, Turkey.
The course will provide participants with training skills for development and implementation of educational programmes aimed to adult people, will introduce them with modern management approaches designed to enhance the educational dimension of cultural organisations and will present them adult education methods based on social constructivism perspective.
The course will be offered in Izmir, Turkey, 19-24th of July 2009 and once again in Verona, Italy, 05-11th of September 2009.
Course announcement.