CONTEXTDuring the last years, an increased European interest in the potential of amateur arts and voluntary culture in fostering social inclusion can be witnessed. This is reflected in a range of publications and projects focussing on this interconnection (Cultural Heritage Counts for Europe report 2018; European Commission 2018; European Research Partnership on Cultural and Creative Spillovers 2019; Matarasso 2018; Culture Action Europe 2018). Based on this data, own research, and results of the former Erasmus+ project BRIDGING, the rationale behind this new project is that amateur arts and voluntary culture enhances social inclusion. Many learning providers in the field know for the potential of their work to support social inclusion. Yet, how this can be done and what categories and practical questions need to be considered when working on this objective is often unclear. OBJECTIVESThe project BOOST aims at empowering learning providers in the sector of amateur arts and voluntary culture to contribute to social inclusion. It supports the self-reflection of learning providers on their potential for fostering social inclusion along different dimensions and categories in form of an online Benchmark Tool; and it provides practice-oriented options for learning providers in the field on how to develop an organisation’s level of social inclusion.ACTIVITIESThe first output of the project will be a Baseline Survey on good practice of benchmarking and recommendations on social inclusion. It will be carried out by all partners on relevant studies, reports, and literature and with expert interviews and focus groups with selected learning providers in the sector.The second step will be to structure the outcomes of the Baseline Survey into main relevant areas. That means that they will be clustered and divided along main relevant issues, like: access to activity, content of activity, outcome of activity, etc. Each identified issue will furthermore be divided into concrete questions, that will help the learning providers to ask themselves how they are currently ensuring inclusive access to the activity, inclusive content of the activity, inclusive outcomes of the activity, etc. A transnational training on the Benchmark Tool will be a possibility to train the partner organisations in benchmarking in the civil society sector and reflect with experts on the tool and adapt it.The learning providers that will help to test and develop the Benchmark Tool further will also be involved in the development of the Practice Methods. The development of the Practice Methods will happen in teams of three project partners in the framework of trilateral meetings. Each team consists of two practice partners and one consulting partner as well as one identified learning provider. During a period of twelve months these teams will have time to develop, reflect, adapt, document and disseminate the Practice Methods. The Practice Methods are linked to the Benchmark Tool so that they can directly support an organisation’s development in social inclusion according to the result of its self-assessment. The Manual for the use of the Benchmark Tool and the Practice Methods will be developed based on the tests and the impact assessment. The impact assessment is led by a research-based partner in the consortium. In a first step, the partners will formulate recommendations and then create the Manual so that other learning providers can easily use the Benchmark Tool and the Practice Methods.The partner consortium will carry out a European Symposium in Krakow where external organisations and experts are invited to discuss the Benchmark Tool and the Practice Methods with the partner consortium in discussions and workshops.EXPECTED RESULTS AND IMPACTSThe project aims at initiating a thorough quality development process in the sector. In the short-term perspective the project supports learning providers in their orientation and development towards a socially more inclusive work, including the initiation of new socially inclusive activities. By these means learning providers will be enabled to define their strategy and possible activities regarding social inclusion in detail. On the long-term, we expect the project’s information provision, awareness raising as well as new possibilities for further education regarding amateur arts and voluntary culture will inspire the learning providers in the sector to be more societally engaged and to raise their efforts in social inclusion.PARTICIPATING ORGANISATIONSThe project consortium circle includes 6 partners from 5 countries in Northern, Eastern and Western Europe, that represent four strong national umbrellas as well as two knowledge and research centres, representing a transnational European sum of varied expertise and experiences in the field, which we cannot find in just one of the participating countries. The project partners share the responsibilities equally.

AIM AND OBJECTIVES The overall aim has been to improve the competences of the voluntary associations and their volunteers to provide enlivening arts and culture opportunities in the sparsely populated communities, with an added value for civic and democratic participation, community bonding and local identity.The objectives have centred around: 1) To develop innovative ways of outreach to citizens engaged in arts and culture to become resourceful culture volunteers e.g culture guides, arts volunteers, mentors, champions for the arts .2) To develop high quality courses tailored to these groups on how to organise cultural activities with an added community value e.g. recognition of prior learning, volunteer management, media literacy skills, event management, levering-in resources, improving the local cultural offer 3) To develop the competences and skills of the voluntary associations to support volunteering and cooperation with stakeholders - building connections, co-production activities, encouraging groups to not work in silos but share information/skills/expertise/kit/equipment/venues 4) To develop appropriate methods to assess the involved knowledge, skills and attitudes to fulfil such demanding voluntary work e.g. field studies, evidence of prior need, desk research, case studies. OUTLINE OF ACTIVITIES The innovative dimension of this project is its integrated adult education approach, where we will: 1) Complete local field surveys of the current competence profiles of cultural volunteering to get a baseline as well as state of the art examples for the succeeding development work 2) Develop an integrated curricula frame for cultural volunteers, as well as culture managers, to provide enlivening cross-culture activities with added community values. 3) To design and test a series of national pilot courses for culture volunteers and managers in the varied contexts of the partner countries. 4) To design and test new Erasmus+ pilot courses for culture volunteers, as well as culture managers, with the aim to offer sustainable Erasmus+ training events and also, high quality national courses after the end of the project.5) To provide a Communication Portal with desk research and other supporting information about the issues of the project as well as presentations of the project’s pilot work and outputs to the virtual audiences. The Partnership Circle includes • two national umbrella organisations for voluntary culture: Voluntary Arts Network in United Kingdom and Cultural Councils in Denmark; • one national association for liberal adult education: The Hungarian Folk High School Society; • two organisations from the liberal adult education and NGO work, with expertise in field research and curricula planning: Foundation of Alternative Educational Initiatives in Poland, and Interfolk, institute for Civil Society from Denmark; • one public body, the Municipality of Lousada, Portugal. • ActKnowledge from New York will be involved in the pilot work as the initial evaluators (theory of change process) and the final evaluation will be produced by beatitude.ad.vitam - a health/arts Community Interest Company in Liverpool - who specialise in a formative and summative approach. This multilateral partnership circle, with a huge dissemination potential, represent a transnational European totality of varied expertise and experiences in the field, which we cannot find in just one of the countries. Learning curricular and programmes will be disseminated widely at the end of the project to ensure further take-up of opportunities and to build a wider network of contacts, partners and associates. Legacy courses are in place to ensure that learning continues after the initial phase of project activity has been completed e.g. Liverpool/Vol Arts; Denmark/Interfolk.

BACKGROUND The decline of trust the last decade is one of the central challenges of our societies. Several surveys by UN, OECD, EU and others indicate that the declining trust refers not only to the usual suspects as governments, companies and mainstream media, but also to NGOs and even more concerning to an increased distrust of other people. Trust is the fundamental element of social capital in a country, and the World Development Report (2013) shows that countries, where people are more likely to trust others, are also countries where there is less violence and more political stability, accountability and stronger economic growth. Furthermore, trustful social relations are essential for happiness. The World Happiness Report (2012) indicates trust as one of the major reasons that some countries are happier than others. Trust among fellow citizens is also essential for the subjective well-being or Quality of Life. Accordingly, the Eurostat Report: Quality of life in Europe – facts and views (2016) can conclude - contrary to one of the overarching aims of all EU learning and culture programmes - that the Quality of Life for the EU citizens is declining. NEED Without trust, institutions don’t work, societies falter and people lose faith in each other. Here, we think, the European sector of participatory culture (amateur arts, voluntary culture and heritage) can make a difference. This sector is, next to amateur sport, the largest civil society sector in the EU member states, and it has in the last decade been the civil society area with the highest rate of expansion in members and new associations. A vast number of voluntary and paid staff and artists are employed in a myriad of associations to provide arts and culture based activities for about 38 pct of the peoples in the member states (Eurobarometer 399, November 2013). However, the voluntary arts and culture associations could strengthen their societal engagement. Especially in these times, the learning providers in this sector should prioritise new initiatives that can help to counter the current decline of the cohesiveness and mutual trust in our communities. AIM AND INNOVATIVE ELEMENTS The aim is to bridge social capital and to promote inclusion, cohesion and trust by strengthening the participatory and co-creative culture activities in the European sector of amateur arts, voluntary culture and heritage. Our development work will focus on bridging social capital in the following five contexts of culture activities and lifelong learning: inter-social, inter-generational, inter-regional, inter-cultural, and inter-European. Thereby, we intend to strengthen new participatory culture and co-creation activities, where the learning context are changed not only from individual creativity to collective creativity, but to bridge people normally outside of each other’s direct social networks - not just bonding social capital between similar subgroups of individuals, but bridging former segregated social groups. KEY ACTIVITIES AND OUTPUTS The 2-year project has four main phases: 1) FOUNDING - launch the Communication Portal, English ed. and complete a State of the Arts Survey, seven language ed. ; 2) DEVELOP - compile good practice and innovative approaches and publish five Thematic Compendia, seven language ed.; 3) TEST - design and test curricula by seven national pilot courses and two European pilot courses, and provide Curriculum Report, seven language ed., and design sustainable Erasmus+ training course packages; 4) VALORISE - complete seven national conferences including representative foreign guests, deliver final dissemination and publish Project Summary report, English ed. IMPACT AND BENEFITS The goals are on short term to educate the educators, to teach and engage the key staff in the huge European lifelong learning sector of participatory arts and culture to initiate new co-creative culture activities with high potential of bridging social capital. On long term, we expect it can help to increase the mutual trust and thereby improve the quality of life for our EU citizens. We expect the project’s information provision, awareness raising as well as new possibilities for further education regarding participatory culture and co-creation will inspire the learning providers in amateur arts, voluntary culture and heritage to be more societal engaged to counter the current decline of cultural cohesion and mutual trust in our communities and to promote empowerment, togetherness, recognition, openness and inclusive participation among former segregated social groups. PARTNERSHIP CIRCLE The partnership circle includes 8 partners from 7 countries in Northern, Eastern and Western Europe, that represent four strong national umbrellas as well as four knowledge and research centres, representing a transnational European sum of varied expertises and experiences in the field, which we cannot find in just one of the