We wish to thank the persons, institutions, initiatives, and projects which have contributed to this book. Many of these have been directly associated with the authoring of the book and with the European Commission’s Erasmus+ project Strategic Partnership: Agents of Change in Education (SPACE) which provided the framework for the book’s development.1 These include the SPACE project partner institutions Artesis Plantijn University College in Belgium; the European Network for Opera and Dance Education (RESEO) in Belgium; Dundalk Institute of Technology in Ireland; Speel je Wijs in the Netherlands; Western Norway University of Applied Science in Norway; and Curso de Música Silva Monteiro in Portugal. We would also like to thank the following institutions, initiatives, and projects who contributed to the development of WASO before and during the SPACE project’s existence in a large variety of ways. Of these, the most profound contribution was made by the European projects which, through their publication and sharing of open-access WASO materials, provided examples and materials, and invited us, as authors, to build upon their experiences and findings. For this, we are truly grateful:
- –Implementing Creative Strategies into Science Teaching (CREAT-IT): European Commission 2013–2015.2
- –Write a Science Opera (WASO): European Economic Area 2014–2016.
- –Developing an Engaging Science Classroom (CREATIONS): European Commission 2015–2018.3
- –Compenta: Cultuureducatie met Kwaliteit in the Netherlands 2017.
We would also like to thank the following for their contributions to WASO during the past years: the University and College Network for Western Norway (UH-nett Vest, Norway), University of Bergen (Norway), University of Stavanger (Norway), the Stord/Haugesund University College K-PED programme and CASE centre (Norway), the Bergen National Opera (Norway), Science View (Greece), Ellinogermaniki Agogi (Greece), the Royal Opera House Education Department (UK), Galileo Teacher Training Programme (Portugal), Global Hands on Universe (USA), the European Space Agency’s European Space Technology and Research Centre (ESTEC, the Netherlands).
We thank all the schools, universities, kindergartens, science institutions, and opera and art institutions which invited the different WASO teams into their premises since the year 2011 to implement, evaluate, analyse, enjoy, risk, learn, discuss, critique, and further develop the WASO experience together with us.
We thank Marieke McBean and Magne Espeland for their valuable comments during the final stages of writing this book.
Finally, the authors wish to thank the Global Science Opera participants for allowing WASO to be implemented on a global stage.
Notes
Project website: www.steameducation.eu