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What is a "Children's University"?
Soon after the first Children’s Universities have been launched around 10 years ago, the term "Children's University" became a well known synonym for science related lectures, workshops or demonstrations for children and young people.
Usually they are delivered by academics and specifically made-to-measure for the needs and prospects of children typically aged from 7 to 14 years. Most of these activities take place at a university’s premises and imitate academic life to a certain extent. Currently, activities of that kind take place at more than 200 locations all over Europe. However, there is no one single model for organizing a Children’s University - there are different concepts inherent, ranging from a series of events over the year (after school sessions, out-of-school-hours programs or alike) to specific annual events (summer schools or similar), with various levels of curricularity and various degrees of cooperation with the school sector.
The EUCU.NET history
This diversity of admirable projects is why EUCU.NET was founded and aims to facilitate cooperation and exchange of knowledge among exiting organizers and supports to kick start new Children’s Universities - and to build capacity for underpinning the policy relevance of Children'S Universities as well as for quality enhancement and impact analysis. For this aim, EUCU.NET was sustainably established as an independent non-profit membership organization with more than 40 institutional members and founding members from all over Europe, and beyond - after it had been initiated with support by the European Commission under FP7 (Science and Society) from 2008-2010. The aim of the EUCU.NET association is to support networking, quality development and to make the outcomes more traceable and comparable – to highlight the relevance of the Children’s University approach and make it transferable on all European levels.
The mission goes on ...
In the meanwhile it became obvious, that this approach goes definitely beyond the scopes of mere science communication, as the engagement with this totally non-traditional target group has a notable impact on institutional development of science organizations - as Children's Universities still represent the most radical approach to open universities to a wider public. This is the essential matter why EUCU.NET support the SiS-CATALYST mission and became integral part of this initiative. |
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The "Children's University" approach |