Short history of the International Kolding Conference

Once upon a time – about twelve years ago - two teachers at Kolding Gymnasium (in the Western part of Denmark) got a wild idea: an international school conference to be held at our school with participation from as many European countries as possible.

The general idea with the conference:

We decided that the title of the conference should be

 “Language, Culture and Communication”, and the aims were:

• to establish a European network where students or whole classes could cooperate on specific projects;
• to further the possibilities of subject-related cooperation among teachers from different European countries;
• to establish new friendships among the participants;<>
• to promote the willingness to communicate with each other despite language barriers;
• to eliminate national prejudices and to overcome nationalistic tendencies;
• to promote a sense of European togetherness by joint activities;
• to promote both the awareness of European diversity and the sense of European unity.

The idea and the aims were immediately accepted by our colleagues and our headmaster, so we set to work, and it resulted in:

The First Conference in Kolding in September 1994

We invited two students and one teacher from each country. It gave some interesting problems to find a school in each of the countries to which we could send the invitation, but in the end we succeeded: 21 countries (schools) took part in the first conference, which lasted for five days. All the delegates were accommodated in private homes (students with students and teachers with teachers), and thanks to financial support from the EU, the County of Vejle, the town of Kolding and some local firms we could make the conference fairly cheap for the participants.

 

Was it a Success?

Yes, definitely! – so much that on the last day of the conference it was decided to continue the cooperation, the whole idea, and to have a similar conference every second year, and already then the German teacher, Mr. Heinz Moll, invited us all to the next conference in Aachen.

The topic of the first Kolding Conference was:

language – culture – civilisation,

and we focused on Danish culture and civilisation as a starting point for all discussions. Within the main topic, we had a common topic: Hans Christian Andersen’s Fairy-Tales.

We wanted to create a European network of schools willing and able to work together in different aspects of teaching.

The network works! During the years we have had many activities going on, small and bigger projects and also Comenius projects.

 

Some examples of the network activities that have taken place:

• classes working on the same topic and presenting their work on the Internet (there have been topics like: literature, art, clothes, music, maths, physics …)
• groups of students making presentations of: their countries, their schools, their school systems, European youth,
• exchanges: classes and single students
• school visits: teachers visiting a school with a general or more specific subject.
• exchange of teaching material and teaching methods.
• cultural information and discussion between teachers and between students.

The two next conferences were held in Aachen 1996 (Germany) and Torino 1998 (Italy). They were both built according to the same principles: language – culture –civilisation and now with the starting point in German / Italian cultures.

In 2000 the Kolding Conference was held in Alva, Scotland, this time with a specific topic. The focus at this conference was “Global Citizenship”.

In 2002 in Helsinki (Finland), the topic of the Kolding Conference was “Minorities”

In 2004 the conference went back to Kolding, Denmark to celebrate the ten-year-jubilee. This time the topic was: “The Enlargement of Europe” with special focus on European Youth.

In Turin (Italy) 2006 the topic of the Kolding Conference was “Sports” – focusing on all aspects of sports.

 

Benefits of the organizing school

What more than the above network and network activities can the Kolding Conference bring the participating schools and especially the organizing school?

We usually prepare something for the conference at our home school, for instance reading articles or maybe short stories and making presentations, articles, photos, point of views or other things. These activities can take place in as many classes as you want them to, e.g. English classes, other language classes or classes of social science can discuss the topics, and students can discuss in groups and make oral or written presentations of their work.

 

The organizing school will benefit from:

• a week of international atmosphere - an often needed breath of fresh air in the daily life of school
• an attempt of international activities in different subjects
• enthusiastic students and (hopefully) teachers who find it engaging to organize the conference
• a huge local publicity of great interest for most schools
• an opportunity to collaborate with local politicians and the business community of the school’s area.
• an exceptional opportunity to activate also the parents
• the chance of choosing the main topic and activities of the conference