The project starts from the analysis and consideration that little has been done to integrate sexual diversity, the critical and theoretical framework and active LGBTIQ+ policies in the training, preparatory and updating curriculum of educators, trainers, animators and teachers. Such perspectives rarely find space in education, especially if of a formal nature: the numerous exceptions in Italy and in Europe are in fact often due to the will of individual schools and/or educational centres, through educational pacts and collaborations with organizations engaged in the fight against intolerance, discrimination and homobitransphobia.
The priorities of “Streets aligned” reflect the desire to build new educational alliances, no less effective than other and more usual forms of activism. The need is to create educational paths
holistic, which are able to better prepare those who take care of the new generations and more generally of the learning communities. Thus producing a change in attitudes, values, behaviors and human relationships, a learning that implies a conscious effort on the part of the participants to become themselves agents of change and social justice.
Absence and removal produce dramatic effects: gaps and unpreparedness in fact facilitate the presence of negative, violent attitudes to the detriment of LGBTIQ+ communities and, more subtly, contribute to producing invisible minorities. The lack of confrontation hinders the creation of broader paths of growth and awareness for the benefit of teachers and students alike: an obstacle to the development of good forms of democratic participation and understanding of the corpus of European politics and values.
Propositions, struggles and political debates regarding anti-discrimination and LGBTIQ+ rights are a fundamental part of our community culture. At the same time, they also pose a challenge to the educating communities, inviting them to contribute with tangible efforts and results. Consequently, the partnership identifies coherent priorities, leveraging its own experience in the field of the production of inclusive educational paths, especially oriented towards the upskilling of educators, trainers, socio-cultural animators, teachers.
The annual report of ILGA-Europe (2021) underlines the increase of hate phenomena, discrimination and intolerance against the LGBTIQ+ communities, but also the backwardness of many educational and educational contexts. Streets aligned is an intervention in this sense: a bottom-up involvement, pedagogically solid, capable of promoting an inclusive climate as well as the acquisition of both basic and specific skills. The nuclei of LGBTIQ+ inclusive education, designed together and for educators, in fact guarantee the development of listening, social-emotional and critical-relational skills for the benefit of everyday educational life.
Familiarity with LGBTIQ+ Inclusive Education opens up pedagogically valid opportunities, useful for improving the relational dynamics between educators and pupils, as well as the educational space in a participatory, democratic, sensitive and receptive key to active European policies. Streets aligned acts on certain priorities to deconstruct silences, removals and "invisible minorities": what message do the environments and spaces of education and instruction send? What effects does the “hidden curriculum” produce?
The project aims to formulate an even partial answer to these questions, which raise complex challenges for educators, in fact supporting the professionalism of education in breaking down and mapping the units of one's work: a stimulus to conduct a continuous and meaningful reflection and to integrate a critical, analytical, emotionally participatory gaze, which from LGBTIQ+ Inclusive Education leads to a substantial increase in the quality of materials.