The creative sector is an important actor for the development of societies, economy and emerging futures. Important components of this growth have been advertising, visual communications and design. According to an independent study by Deloitte (Value of Advertising, 2017), every Euro spent on advertising approximately adds seven euro to the GDP. The EUR 92 billion spent on advertising in 2014 in the EU contributed EUR 643 billion to the GDP, representing 4.6% of the overall EU GDP. Additionally, there are as many as six million jobs in advertising in the EU, equivalent to 2.6% of all EU employment.Creativity is also becoming increasingly valued by people across commercial sectors, with research led businesses such as McKinsey finding strong correlation between creativity and financial performance (Mckinsey: Creativity's Bottom Line, 2017). With digital and mobile technologies becoming an increasingly important facet of modern life, it is necessary to ensure that the skills taught in education match the pace of innovation. Among various European stakeholders, there is great concern on the need to address the gap between the changing needs of the industry and the availability of a highly skilled workforce at the EU level. This challenge is widely described in policy documents such as the Digital Education Action Plan, the report on a coherent EU policy for cultural and creative industries, A new skills agenda for Europe, the Council Recommendations on key competences for lifelong learning or A new European Agenda for Culture, among many others.On the industry's side, each year D&AD uses the insight that it gets from the 20,000 pieces of work entered into its professional awards along with the thousands of student award entries to identify the gap between what is taught in universities and colleges and the skills required by the creative industry.Drawn on a detailed analysis of needs from D&AD and Art Directors Club of Europe (ADCE), Bridging the Creativity Gap will focus on skills such as Storytelling, Ideation & Critical thought, Prototyping, Craft, Digital (UX, UI) for the following targeted audiences:The student: those studying - advertising, branding, visual communications, graphic design, service design, product design, interactive design, UX and UI - and the emerging creatives entering the market, with and without professional experience.The tutor: those teaching the above-stated subjects both in VET and Higher Education as well as in-company tutors for the creative industry.In Bridging the Creativity Gap, D&AD, ADCE, Institute of Advanced Architecture of Catalonia | Fab Lab Barcelona (IAAC), KERSNIKOVA Institute | Rampa and University of Oulu will partner to attain the following objectives:(1) To produce a Learning Curriculum encompassing those skills demanded by the creative industry to enable the prosperous incorporation into the industry and career development. (2) To explore a global-local framework for shifting the content of learning and the mechanisms by which it is delivered to more closely mirror the challenges of the creative industry. (3) To design, create and validate interactive OERs (videos, podcasts, tutorials) to properly address the skills gaps among BCG target groups. (4) To promote creative industry VET tutors’ professional development, adapting their key competences to the new challenges (eg. digital and technological innovations) (5) To showcase, disseminate and replicate proven methodologies, tools and practices for the EU creative VET ecosystem. Bridging the Creativity Gap will produce:- Five Intellectual Outputs (i) Learning Curriculum. Competence Matrix (skills and indicators including a paper/study).(ii) methodological toolkit(iii) set of OERs (videos, podcasts, articles, tutors guides) (iv) Teachers’ guidelines. Tutors guidelines, a comprehensive approach for building capacity skills for creative students (facilitation and evaluation handbook (v) Quality Assurance Framework- Two Short-term joint staff training events in London and Barcelona- One blended mobility of VET learners activity in Ljubljana- Two multiplier events in London (D&AD's New Blood Festival) and Barcelona (ADCE's High Potential) addressing an overall audience of at least 200 professionals, students, tutors and stakeholders from the EU creative sector.BCG's activities and results will contribute to reaching a wide impact at the local, regional, national and European levels among the project's participating organisations as well as BCG's targeted groups

Creative practices are underused in the urgent task of changing cultures towards sustainability. CreaTures promotes action for social and ecological sustainability by identifying those aspects of creative practice that contribute most effectively to socio-cultural transformation and producing an open-access framework to support practitioners and policy-makers in driving positive change. The project draws on pilot research that shows how collaboration, reflection and direct engagement are key to changing the public’s orientation to environment issues. Thus, its process of identifying and evaluating the design of significant aspects (and the impact of different contexts) involves three interrelated components: an Observatory, identifying and mapping existing, fragmented and often hidden transformational creative practices; a Laboratory, supporting new experimentation and direct engagement with diverse stakeholders, including the members of the public, by mounting several different scales and types of arts production, and; an Evaluation phase, testing new and existing creative practices in a systematic and concerted way for their impact. The project will combine insights from these undertakings into a transdisciplinary, evidence-based, and practical framework that highlights the strengths of and opportunities for the arts to contribute to addressing climate change and associated effects. The resulting framework will demonstrate effective paths to achieving sustainability, social cohesion and peaceful co-existence at a time of rapid change, offering a strategic research agenda for key stakeholders, a set of innovations addressing the cultures and conditions for delivering greater sustainability, and policy recommendations to focus and optimise work in mobilizing the arts for transformational futures.

Our project, 'Doing-It-Together Science', DITOs, represents a step change in European public engagement with science and innovation. We propose moving from a model in which scientific research, innovation, and problem-solving is mainly driven by scientific/professional institutions to one based on active public participation and capacity building with various levels and strategies of engagement in the scientific process. At the core of our ethos is a recognition of people's existing expertise and the different ways people want to and do engage in science and technology. The project is aimed at elevating public engagement with science across Europe from passive engagement with the process of developing science to an active one. Citizen Science and Do It Yourself (DIY) scientific efforts demonstrate that this is possible, and our aim is to ensure that the European Research Area will become leader in ‘deep’ public engagement that is afforded by these advances. As a 'Coordination and Support Action', this project will support and build upon DIY, grassroots, and frugal innovation initiatives so that in the short and medium term we sustain localised capacity building and in the long term the effects of these grassroots efforts channel to policy makers at different levels, from external advice to societal inputs, regarding appropriate research and innovation policies. The proposal includes the participation of policy bodies (European Citizen Science Association, DE), SMEs (Tekiu, UK; Eutema, AT), Universities (University College London, UK; Universite Paris Descartes, FR; University of Genève, CH), Science galleries and public spaces (Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences, BE; Medialab-Prado, E; Kersnikova Institution, SL) and NGOs (Meritum Association, PL; Waag Society, NL)

DOIT contributes to youth employment and to create new jobs in the social economy by nurturing in young pupils seeds for active social innovation: entrepreneurial mind-sets, knowhow and skills. The project empowers primary and secondary school pupils (6-16 years) alongside educators to apply open innovation methods, digital maker tools and collaboration skills to tackle societal problems. It will develop ground-breaking DOIT toolboxes for children as well facilitators, which provide complementary knowhow and support. They are designed for experiencing being a social innovator in mobile and fixed child-friendly makerspaces and are easily accessible at the interactive DOIT webplatform. Co-created with help of the Children’s Advisory Committee, DOIT novel resources cover inspirational experimentation, design, prototyping and basic business modelling knowhow needed for sustainable product and service innovation. The DOIT children’s social innovation and entrepreneurship programme is piloted and evaluated across 10 European countries (AT, BE, DE, DK, ES, FI, HR, NL, RS und SI), reaching 42.000 children and 20.000 facilitators in schools, innovation labs, maker spaces and social enterprises. It offers intergenerational workshops and training events targeted at different learner needs and learning settings. DOIT showcases how its child-friendly, intergenerational maker approach enables young people to acquire the manual, technological, intellectual and social skills they need to be active and initiate social good. DOIT’s online idea competition, open to all children in Europe, will inspire them to pursue an entrepreneurial career path. The project consortium comprises experienced actors across the social innovation value chain with links to related European initiatives fostering young entrepreneurship education. DOIT’s ambassador Network (currently more than 80 supporting institutions) and open educational resources will drive DOIT’s long-term sustainability and impact.