After the first cycle of the six DIRECTORS workshops, implemented both in Croatia and the Netherlands, the Dutch Erasmus+ Funding Agency visited us for the mid-term project review on 14 January 2025. Our Dutch project partners, Bastiaan van Loenen and Frederika Welle Donker from TU Delft met with members of the agency at the Faculty of Architecture & the Built Environment. Our interim results were shown, and a free discussion on the best way to execute our future-planned activities ensued. The review outcome was positive: the project is running on schedule, and the project results meet the expectations. There is a lot of enthusiasm for the project, and the cooperation between partners is running smoothly despite the geographical distance and the different languages. Especially the direct approach, short communication lines, and the regular online meetings between the project partners work well to keep the project on the rails. Of course, it is helpful that the project partners already knew each other from the previous Twinnings Open Data Operational (TODO) project of 2019-2023. The review report recommended that we pay more attention to the impacts of our project, not just our intended impacts but also serendipitous impacts. One example of such serendipity is the current revision of the Dutch curriculum of primary schools by SLO. The meeting TU Delft had with SLO last year, in which our project was explained, was received with great interest by SLO who took our suggestions to heart. In addition, our project was discussed during a seminar last year where representatives of all levels of geo-education were present. Although the seminar was aimed at secondary and tertiary education, we were able to stress the importance of starting at the primary level.
Overall, the project is running on schedule, and we are looking forward to the 2nd cycle of our workshops!