A4SEE in lockdown

The A4SEE project team, gathering at a time before masks and social distancing

It’s hard to believe that the A4SEE project has been running for just over nine months. In February all the partners met in Delft to formulate a schedule that would see the project run until its completion at the end of of 2022. We discussed the many work packages, a rich itinerary and exciting opportunities but a single topic kept sliding in and out of focus. This, of course, was regarding the new virus that was spreading rapidly across the globe but still only had a few dozen cases in Europe.

A timelapse of the co-ordination of A4SEE activities

It is easy to see with hindsight how the plans we were making would be laid to waste by the measures that would soon be put in place to control the virus and its spread. This is especially true for a joint educational project that relies on people exchanging thoughts and ideas through travel around Europe.

As many around the world have found, face to face discussions have been replaced with discussions over webcam and microphone. For the day to day administration this has been fine, but it we must do more to adapt our exchange activities to the new challenges we are faced with.

Luckily, we have a great team on board that is eager to make the best of it. So far we have been able to get together during the kick-off event but we had to cancel the initial travel to all partners to get to know them a bit better. Let’s hope this can be done before the end of the year.

We’ll use this blog to post updates about the project and I hope that we’ll have many interesting videos and photos of the activities we’ll deliver as part of the Alliance for Sports Engineering Education.