EUSTORY France Announces New Competition
This year, the EUSTORY Competition in France takes places for the second time. After the Notre Europe – Institut Jacques Delors announced the very first French competition in 2012-2013 as a pilot project, they started the second round in September/October 2014 with the help of a consortium of partner organisations.
The consortium consists of the Federation of French-German Cultural Centres (La Fédération des Maisons Franco-Allemandes), the French Association of History and Geography Teachers (APHG) and the EUSTORY Network of the Körber Foundation. The competition is held under the umbrella of the Mission Centenaire, a French governmental institution which organises and coordinates projects dealing with the remembrance of World War I throughout the years 2014-2018.
Young students above 15 years of age can hand in their own research papers on the topic of: “Europe on the battlefields – the legacy of World War I for us today” (“L´Europe sur le champ de bataille: que nous reste-t-il de la Première Guerre mondiale?”) The aim of the competition is to provide an incentive to young people to investigate their own local and regional history and put it in a greater context. After preparing their own study they might have a different relation to their own family, region or even country. Questions like these should help the French students to start their own project:
- “What was the situation before World War I started in 1914 in my region, my school or in my family? Which factors changed?”
- “How does the daily life look like during times of war?”
- “How did the youth in 1914 experience the war? How did they get information about the war?”
Young students are encouraged to do research in archives or libraries, to conduct interviews with contemporary witnesses, to find out new facts or valuable documents in order to reconstruct the lives and fates of people and their individual stories. They are also encouraged to not only work in French on their own or within a French group of peers, but they are also invited to work together with peers from towns and cities in neighbouring countries. These cross-border competition entries can be handed in bilingual versions.
In order to support the students there will be a teacher’s workshop on 3 December 2014 in Paris, where teachers can get information and pedagogical material for their students and their own work as tutors.
The official partners of the EUSTORY France competition are the Federation on French-German cultural centres (“La Fédération des Maisons Franco-Allemands”) with its six cultural centres in Aix, Brest, Dijon, Montpellier, Nantes and Paris, the Notre Europe – Institut Jacques Delors and the Association of History and Geography Teachers in France (“L’ Association des Professeurs d’Histoire et e Géographie”). The Körber Foundation with its EUSTORY Network covers the European dimension of the French competition, i. e. by organising the History Camps in which prize winners can take part.
Click here to download the competition brochure.