The project "Vilnius is a School" together with Vilnius City Municipality and "Edu Vilnius" invites all schools to go out to learn outside the school on May 2 and announces "A Day in the City"!
During the pandemic, the educational process moved to a virtual space, and this was a sign that learning can take place not only in classrooms, and new, innovative solutions need to be sought. This is how Vilnius' idea to transform city spaces into an open school was born, defeating as many as 2021 cities around the world in the 2022–600 Global Mayors' Challenge and winning 1 million. JAV dollars in funding from Bloomberg Philanthropies.
The idea turned into a long-term project "Vilnius is a School", the main goal of which is to move at least 10 percent of lessons from the school building to city spaces and implement a blended learning model. In this way, schools are encouraged to creatively use the most diverse places in Vilnius and increasingly combine traditional lessons in classrooms with lessons in institutions, museums, parks or simply on the streets of the Old Town.
Almost 2 teachers and more than 5000 organizations have joined the "Vilnius is a School" project in more than 120 years, and the online platform hosts more than 750 unique lessons. Currently, 4,5 percent of lessons in Vilnius take place outside the school and this number is constantly growing. The project also became one of the 10 finalists in the Education category of the international European Policy Innovation Competition 2024.
“Vilnius has long been a powerful school, and we are finally starting to use it more and more. Although more than two years of cooperation with Bloomberg Philanthropies are coming to an end, “Vilnius is a School” certainly does not end there. We are entering a new stage of the project, aiming to focus on such important areas as social-emotional, civic education, and career education. We are actively working to include more educational institutions in the project and inspire the desire to implement similar programs in other cities,” says Vytautas Mitalas, Vice Mayor of Vilnius.
On May 2, all schools in the capital are invited to plan all lessons for all students in the city and thus turn the capital into a real school. Teachers are invited to choose from lessons created by their colleagues and conduct them in various locations in the city. This year, in celebration of the title of “Vilnius – European Green Capital 2025”, “Day in the City” has been supplemented with 12 outdoor lessons that encourage better understanding of Vilnius’ biodiversity and different districts. Also, on this day, project partners such as Akropolis Ice, Vilnius County Chief Police Commissariat, State Labour Inspectorate, Lithuanian Red Cross, Beam, SEB Bank and others. Menų spaustuvė also agreed to contribute to the lessons offered to students in the capital on this occasion.
"As soon as the "Day in the City" was announced, teachers started looking for ideas and reserving partner lessons and spaces. We keep receiving messages that schools have already specifically planned lessons in the city for that day. Although we strive for learning outside of school to be planned evenly throughout the entire school year, we believe that this joint full-day outing to our city will inspire us even more to learn from everything Vilnius has to offer," says Snieguolė Kavoliūnienė, project manager of the "Vilnius is a School" project.
During the "Day in the City" a photo contest for students is also announced. While participating in classes in the city, students must immortalize the idea that the city is a school in their photos. One class can send one photo throughout May 2. A commission formed by "Edu Vilnius" will select and award 12 best photo in each class category (from grades 1 to 1) by May 12. Additional prizes are also waiting for Facebook voting.
"A Day in the City" becomes a symbolic end point of the first phase of the project and the beginning of a new one. It is hoped that the universal learning of young Vilnius residents in the city on the same day will become a long-standing tradition and will encourage more and more teachers and students to join this initiative.
