Dr Antonia Liguori and Prof Mike Wilson delivered their keynote opening the first two days of the International Conference on Interdisciplinary Perspective on Memory Studies, Storytelling and the Impact of Digital Technologies, organised by the Department of Sciences and Humanities of the VNR Vignana Jyothy Institute of Engineering and Technology, India.

The EU funded project SOLIS was presented as a case study to reflect on the impact of digital storytelling to improve students wellbeing within School Education. Starting from data collected through focus groups and participatory workshops with educators and students, the following challenges to inclusive education were discussed:

• Schools have to foster an inclusive ethos;
• The role of students is of paramount importance as they are the ones that have to embrace inclusion as an attitude towards their peers;
• Teachers should be able to embrace the inclusive ethos as a guiding principle in their teaching practice;
• Parents and local communities also have to embrace the inclusive ethos and be actively involved in the process

Examples of digital stories created by all the actors involved in the School system were screened and analysed to propose the role of storytelling as inclusive practice in Education.

You can watch some of the digital stories created by teachers from 8 different European countries as part of the SOLIS project here:

Starting from the data collected, digital tools for teachers of students aged 12-16 years of age are now under development: by the end of April an E-learning platform (Modules addressing cultural diversity and discrimination), Digital stories (inclusion and wellbeing), Teacher web portal (case studies and training) will be available as open resources.

For more information on SOLIS, you can visit the project website: https://www.solis-project.eu/