Abstract:

One of the main reasons education is valued so highly in modern societies is the role it plays in relation to social mobility. This role has long been debated between those who emphasize its contribution to social mobility [Boudon 1974; Collins 1979] and those who focus on its contribution to social reproduction. In order to understand this debate, it is useful to review practice examples with other types of mobility – academic, professional, cultural and personal [Byram 2008]. Our experience of combining distant/virtual and real mobility programmes under the general title of «Faces of Russia» is fruitful. The programmes were organized and carried out by Foundation Romualdo Del Bianco (Florence, Italy) in 2015-2019 in the form of distant learning assignments and presentations at real workshops in situ with the participation of students, master students, professors (in total more than 100 people) from several countries including the Russian Federation (St.Petersburg, Kemerovo Universities of Culture, Peter the Great Polytechnic University). The members of the groups majored in the History of Arts, Conservation/ Restoration, International Art Business, Linguistics, Translation and Pedagogy. The workshop participants enjoyed the assignment in the international context as they learnt much to achieve good, interesting and useful things for their multicultural and language skills improvement, human development which in total contributed their mobility in every sense. In the paper the description of the structure of the programmes is given together with the examples of presentations. It also covers the description of the resources, examples of the articles, elective course syllabus can better show the role of the Romualdo Del Bianco Foundation website for the safeguarding of the cultural heritage, the protection of the diversity of cultural expressions and tourist culture building a new partnership model. The participants got certificates of participation.Two manuals were written on the basis of the experience. All the participants enjoyed working on the issues of heritage. Such programmes provide research and practice synergetic effect for heritage conservation, restoration, presentation ideas improvement, helping to overcome language barriers, when content and language integration help professional dialogue, terminology language teaching and learning, competency development under multicultural context smart travel. The approach helps to spread the word, secures ‘cultural medium’ via smart travel, dialogue to the benefit of the planet we all share. More importantly one can conclude: to combine virtual and real, significantly actual today distant learning in combination with real workshop meetings, communication in the international context on heritage conservation/preservation issues suit many sorts of participants contribute overall education and eventually social mobility.

Keywords:

Education, types of mobility, art and humanities, communication.