Erasmus Policy Statement 

The Escuela de Arte y Superior de Diseño Gran Canaria was awarded the Erasmus Charter for Higher Education 2021-2027 for the period of the Erasmus+ Program ending at the academic year 2021-2027

Strategy for the organization

The Gran Canaria School of Art and Design has successfully implemented the Erasmus program. The Erasmus Program has given us the possibility, first of all , of making Art Education and Design Higher Education visible on the island of Gran Canaria. Our outermost geographical location makes a difference with the rest of educational centers of this type throughout the rest of Spain, making direct interaction and the exchange of both educational and professional experiences more complicated. The Erasmus programme brings us closer to Europe thanks to the financial grant that enables both our students and our teachers to travel to other countries. and experience other educational and professional realities. This aforementioned outermost region and our socio-cultural context make the Erasmus program essential so that many young people can have a “European” experience that they could not otherwise consider.

With the KA131 Mobilities for Studies, every year, an average of 10 students take the second semester of their third year of Higher Artistic Design Education at a European University. These mobilities add extra motivation for all those students who enjoy financial grant, complete and / or complement the training, increasing their academic knowledge due to the content and methodologies acquired in the destination countries. The report made by the students after their mobility help us, as an institution, to have a vision of educational practices in other institutions as well as to create bonds of collaboration beyond study mobility. In many cases, these take the form of both outgoing and incoming teacher mobility, for the training of the teachers themselves or for the delivery of workshops, masterclasses or master classes to students. These interactions allow our Art School to approach the vanguard of the rest of European institutions.

Our objective for this stage with the new ECHE Charter are the following:

• Continue promoting among the students of the Higher Level Training Cycles to carry out their certified professional practices through the Erasmus program. In this way, students complete their academic training by completing their training hours at the workplace in European companies outside of Spain.
• Continue promoting among the students of Higher Artistic Teaching in Design the completion of the second semester of their third year in a European institution outside of Spain, completing and complementing their academic training and recognizing the ECTS credits taken.
• Continue promoting teaching mobility in European educational centers outside Spain among teachers, promoting educational exchange.
• Continue to promote learning mobility in European educational centers outside of Spain among teachers. promoting continuous training, modernization of our educational center and cultural diversity.
• Improve our channels for disseminating the Erasmus program through the modernization of the website, as well as the creation of online and printed publications.

Strategy for the organisation and cumplementarion of international cooperation projects

In the same way that we have been working in recent years, we hope to continue with the KA103 mobilities and improve the allocation of mobilities for the KA107 Program.

• The Erasmus program is already consolidated in our Institution and forms part of the reality of our center and the expectations of our students and teachers. Continue to offering Erasmus mobility and remaining part of the European institutions that are committed to modernizing their educational offer is a priority.

Expected impact of our participation in the programme

We hope to continue growing as a reference center for Artistic Education in the Canary Islands, being our center the most demanded of the four Islands that have an Art School to carry out incoming mobility from countries such as Portugal, Italy and Germany, especially.

• Receiving these students has, in the first place, fostered synergies within the classroom, which would otherwise be unthinkable. To begin with, bilingualism, since most of the students who come to study at our center do not speak Spanish, therefore, both teachers and students relate to this student in English, initially. Furthermore, Teachers adapt the content and the deliveries and exams to this language. This is very positive for the community as a whole.
• In the same way, these students come with an educational experience that in some cases shows similarities with our daily dynamics, but that in other cases, brings different methodologies and ways of working, which are shared with the class group, enriching the relationship in both directions.
• The mobility of outgoing students to countries of the European Union will continue to be preferred. We will continue working to achieve new inter-institutional agreements to expand the offer of centers where our students can carry out study mobility. This is carried out through visits to different centers that have previously been proven to meet the educational needs of our teachings.
• Some of our language proficient teachers visit the centers and of course, we invite them to make a return visit to our center so that both institutions can meet and find points of interest for our students.
• We will continue working to increase the offer of companies and self-employed in the European Union so that our students can carry out certified business practices. The Erasmus office helps each student individually in the search for companies, through electronic channels.
• We intend to continue with the same number of mobilities as the experience of recent years tells us that, for the moment, we have reached the top regarding supply and demand. These are: approximately 10 study mobilities, approximately 30 practice mobilities and approximately 6 teacher mobilities.