Open Vilnius

Goal

Learning can happen anywhere. The city is full of spaces, businesses and institutions that can enrich and deepen the learning experience, which is why we aim to turn Vilnius into one big school.

We encourage schools to combine traditional classroom lessons with lessons in the capital's public spaces. This combination gives more freedom for students' individual creativity, arouses curiosity and motivates them, as knowledge is immediately linked to experience, subjects are integrated and universal skills are developed.

Description

The platform www.vilniusyramokykla.lt provides ideas and lesson plans, integrated activity routes, and spaces and lessons offered by institutions and companies based in Vilnius.

Streets and parks, architecture and urban planning, museums and galleries, institutions and companies – Vilnius opens up and becomes a school for all teachers and students in the capital.

Teachers, companies, institutions, and organizations are invited to give lessons to the capital's students!

Biology, physics, and chemistry lessons can take place in the most advanced laboratories in Vilnius. Museums and galleries offer lessons in history and the arts. Students can go to the cinema to watch films in their original language and thus improve their language skills. In this way, knowledge is immediately linked to experience, subjects are integrated, and curiosity and motivation to learn increase.

However, the platform is not the only activity of the project. In addition, training for teachers and methodology are provided to help integrate learning outside school into the general education program more easily.

Achievements in 2025

The platform www.vilniusyramokykla.lt – the first lesson library of its kind – has been actively used by schools for three years now!  

• More than 5,100 teachers have already joined the platform. 
• More than 1,100 unique lessons and more than 30 spaces have been uploaded. 
• More than 43,000 students have attended lessons held at various institutions.
• We have 145 partners offering lessons at their organizations.
• Lesson materials from the platform have been downloaded more than 400,000 times. 

For the second year in a row, on the occasion of the platform's anniversary, the 10 most active organizations were presented with letters of appreciation from the mayor and unique works of art by artist Greta Rekštytė.

This year, for the first time, 10 schools in Vilnius City Municipality were also awarded. For their active involvement and consistent participation in the project, as well as for their ambition to adopt innovative forms of education and contribute to the development of civic-minded Vilnius residents who know their city, they were presented with special tables and beanbag sets.

For the second year in a row, we also awarded the teachers who were most active in conducting lessons outside of school. At a festive event above the rooftops of the capital, 115 teachers from schools under the jurisdiction of Vilnius City Municipality were presented with exclusive project merchandise sets at the end of the school year. 

The four most active teachers were awarded €1,000 gift vouchers at the Vilnius Teachers' Awards Concert. 

For the first time, we organized "Day in the City" – on May 2, we invited all schools to hold classes outside the school. Our partners joined us and offered lessons specifically designed for this day. At least 80 municipal schools, at least 1,000 classes, and about 25,000 students participated. In total, at least 3,500 lessons took place in the city that day. 

This year, the project's 40-hour professional development program attracted a lot of interest—178 teachers completed it during the year, and a total of 630 Vilnius teachers have been trained under this program over two years! 

For the first time, we organized a team-building event for project coordinators in schools. We wanted participants to become more familiar with the project and each other, and to share their observations and challenges. Forty-six teachers participated in the event. 

We became part of EDUFEST, an art and education festival organized by the Lithuanian National Museum of Art. For this occasion, the museum created special lessons dedicated solely to this event. 

We began collaborating with methodological teacher groups to ensure that the platform best meets the needs of teachers of all subjects. Intensive working sessions have already been held with groups of teachers of ethics and philosophy, art, geography, music, Lithuanian language and literature, and primary education. 

Members of the methodological teacher groups review existing lessons, provide recommendations to future teacher developers, and ensure that they comply with the General Education Programs and education plans. 

DATA

For the fourth time, an annual monitoring survey is being conducted to measure the progress of the project.
46% of students participating in the project say that lessons outside school have helped them discover new career paths. 

In 2025, an assessment of the impact of lessons in the city and the Vilnius is a School project will be carried out. Fifty schools participated in the study. The study was conducted by researchers from the universities of Glasgow (Scotland) and THWS (Germany). 

We are gradually transitioning to recording data outside of school in the Vilnius is a School platform calculator, where schools themselves enter their data and can see how they are doing in the context of Vilnius.

Project report clip

We talked about the project on the Žinių radijas radio show Įjunkim šviesą (Let's Turn on the Light) and on International French Radio. 

Project leader U. Kaunaitė spoke about the project at the international early childhood education conference "Early Childhood Education Summit'25" held at Queen Morta School. 

The project was also presented on January 24, International Education Day, at the event "Education Space," dedicated to dialogue between architects and educators. The event was organized by the Faculty of Architecture of VILNIUS TECH, the Martynas Mažvydas National Library of Lithuania, the Lithuanian National Commission for UNESCO, and the Goethe-Institut Litauen. The event focused on contemporary school architecture and learning outside of school. A recording of the event can be found HERE. 

This year, we ended our collaboration with Bloomberg Philanthropies, whose Mayors Challenge initiative gave birth to and nurtured the idea of Vilnius is a School. We are delighted to continue this project, which is one of the strategic education projects of Vilnius City Municipality.

Project partners: Vilnius City institutions, companies, and organizations based in the capital.

Contact

Project manager Snieguolė Kavoliūnienė
snieguole.kavoliuniene@eduvilnius.lt

Goal

The world is full of complex problems, such as climate warming and social inequalities, and the only way to learn how to tackle such complex challenges is... by learning from a young age.

Description

Phenomenon-based education is one of the Finnish methods of creativity education, involving students in exploring relevant phenomena, asking questions and finding solutions.  It is a method that proposes to look at a life scenario, a contemporary problem or a natural phenomenon as a starting point for learning. An education that is action-oriented and an active, learning person who seeks to make a difference in the world. For this reason, asking the right questions and opening them up to a perspective that relates global phenomena to our own experience is key to a new understanding of learning.

Starting in spring 2022, training is being organised to introduce school communities to the theoretical aspects of such education, to better understand the meanings and values of such education, and to empower them to put phenomenon-based education into practice.

The aim of the training is to provide school community representatives (teachers, administrators, other professionals) with knowledge of the basic theoretical and practical assumptions of phenomenon-based education and to train them to apply phenomenon-based education in school practice.

Achievements in 2025

In 2024–25, 13 general education schools in Vilnius systematically implemented phenomenon-based education in their schools. 

Seventeen original teacher and student projects were created.  

This year, students explored phenomena such as Lithuania, aviation, pigeons, M. K. Čiurlionis, street art, and food. 

Contact

Project manager Benas Beliukevičius
benas.beliukevicius@eduvilnius.lt

Goal

We seek to find a clearer place for urban studies in schools and encourage the exploration of sometimes unjustly forgotten places where students spend a considerable amount of time – school districts. By exploring the districts of the capital, students not only become more familiar with the geography and architecture of the districts, but also with their history, current pace of life, and current events.

Description

This year, we are implementing the project with two organizations – the urban planning agency BLUMA and the Vilnius Museum.

BLUMA is an agency that seeks to strategically develop the biotopes, landscape urbanism, and sustainable management of our cities and make them more people-friendly. Together with them, we are carrying out the "Urbanists' Expedition" activity, during which 7th and 8th grade students can not only get to know the environment and public spaces of the district where their school is located better, but also provide diverse insights to decision-making specialists. This time, the focus of the research is on Naujamiestis and Liepos žaidimų pieva, which is planned to be established in a currently undeveloped area on Kauno Street. During a series of creative workshops lasting several weeks, students become real explorers: archaeologists, observers, painters, poets, and listeners. Each group explores the district through their chosen "lens" – observing, listening, creating, photographing, writing, and drawing, discovering layers of the city that they may never have noticed before.

We are implementing an ongoing program with the Vilnius Museum that invites students to explore their school district. The program is based on exhibitions at the Vilnius Museum ("Who's Going to Viršuliai?", "Krasnucha Stories," "Krasnucha: A Neighborhood That Doesn't Exist?") and research conducted in preparation for the exhibitions (in Viršuliškės, Savanorių Avenue), as well as the museum's educational programs "Experience the City" and "What Can My Neighbor Tell Me?" With the help of this program, we want to involve project participants in getting to know their school district, introduce them to environmental research methods, use the collected material to generate ideas for the district and their community, and draw attention to youth participation in city life. During the program activities, students conduct interviews, explore spaces, and do creative work, choosing the form of implementation they want (exhibitions, posters, poems, etc.).

Achievements in 2025

The pilot project was implemented in the spring with two organizations – the urban planning agency BLUMA and the Vilnius City Museum. Almost 300 students from six schools participated in the project. 

In 2025–26, we invited teachers to participate in 40 academic hours of professional development training, after which they would be able to explore their school district with their students during class, thereby helping to nurture young people who are actively involved in the life of their city. Sixteen teachers started the program. 

Contact

Project manager Benas Beliukevičius
benas.beliukevicius@eduvilnius.lt

Goal

Cultural education not only helps to develop creativity and knowledge of one's own culture, but is also seen as a way to build links between people and shape society and its identity. 

For some children, school is the only one that helps them to learn about culture, which is why in Vilnius we aim to contribute to the cultural education of pupils from a very young age.

Description

Throughout the school year, we invite students and teachers in Vilnius City to be active and use the digital badges-keys introduced in the Cultural Education System, which Edu Vilnius has contributed to the development of. 

Achievements in 2024

The initiative to invite students and teachers in Vilnius City to be active throughout the school year and to use the digital badges-keys installed in the Cultural Education System continues. Each month a different badge-key was highlighted and the activities corresponding to its competences in Vilnius City were presented. Teachers were not only invited to award badges, but also to record their classroom achievements, which were rewarded by visits to cultural and educational activities. In this way, we encouraged cultural learning to become an integral, permanent part of education. At the end of the school year, the most active classes were awarded with symbolic badges-keys.