ŠAK / School and community

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ŠAK is a model of cooperation between school and community. It is a set of ideas, activities, and thoughts with the focus to improve the school environment and the communal life of the neighbourhood through an active engagement of parents, children and citizens.

We started with the idea, that a school as an institution has great potential of public space, which it can offer to its surrounding community. However, schools are often closed off from their surrounding neighbourhoods and their community role is forgotten.

ŠAK is a set of ideas and activities, which aim to connect the school with the community through a shared improvement of school spaces.

The cooperation between school and community is centered around a participatory building of common space on the school grounds. The building of common space improves the space of the school while at the same time improve neighbourhood relationships. The school becomes an active place for education, play, sport and free time activities of the pupils and the whole community.

The pilot phase of the project ran in 2016 in cooperation with Primary School Belehradská in Košice (Slovakia) and in 2017 in cooperation with Private Primary school Užhorodská also in Košice.

For theoretical background see the articles: School as Commons and School as a tool for community building.