"The 8th European Key Competence focuses on the creative expression of ideas, experiences and emotions in a wide range of media. But since culture is a fundamental dimension of the human being, its translation in terms of ""key"" competence is difficult to define, especially when it comes to recognition and validation of skills. This difficulty is accentuated by the considerations and utilitarian logic, often opposing economic plan and sensible and creative plan.Revealed in all social practices and recognized as essential, even existential, by the European Commission, this 8th competence is thus much too often the forgotten one of the political and educational considerations of the national governments.However, in a global context of rising fundamentalism and populism, entry through culture favors the appreciation of a common cultural heritage and the re-appropriation of humanist values, essential to meet the current challenges of a cohesion Europe on the territories. This entry is also a powerful vector of access to key skills development courses, because it encourages and supports the engagement of individuals in a creative process of individual and collective self-training, promoting mobilization and skills development. It is therefore on this context that is fully human, moving, complex, that ""Art-connection"" is committed, to make visible this thread between individual creativity and societal innovation.The project partners - from four European countries: Italy, Portugal, United Kingdom with France as leader -have the ambition to bring out and enhance the cultural dimension as a human experience, ethical, aesthetic and solidarity to mobilise the creativity of everyone in the service of promoting a creative process of innovation in learning territories.The partners will combine their specific research and pedagogical practices, their expertise in the recognition and valorization of experience gained in various cultural and territorial contexts, to create together an innovative solution for the promotion of inclusive educational models.“Art-connection” aims to produce a European Memorandum to support the creation and access to key skills development pathways based on the informal field of cultural heritage common to humanity.The Memorandum will be supplemented by an e-book to contextualize and illustrate the results of the project.The project will be conducted on a global basis, built on a participatory action-research approach carried out in the four partner countries, with a variety of adult audiences and territories.Intellectual productions will be co-produced in a logic of shared responsibilities.They will be the following:- An inventory of tools and contents aimed at studying, from a literature review, the impact of the cultural dimension, in a systemic consideration, on a creative process that also allows the development of the power to act individuals, contributing to job creation, economic growth and social cohesion.- A methodological framework to define the overall participatory action-research mechanism to be implemented in the four partner countries.- A methodological framework to guarantee the quality of dissemination and sustainability of the project results.- A training course developed for several groups of professionals chosen in the context of participatory action research.- An educational package in the curricula / educational methods / training creation, for educational professionals, to support a wide variety of adult audiences, especially those experiencing social and societal exclusion.The European Memorandum resulting from all the intellectual productions of the project, will give a synthetic and oriented reading.Multiplier events organized in the partner countries, linked to intellectual productions and direct participation in the project of academic experts, will allow to connect with political institutions, researchers and actors in the field of adult vocational training, to a collective reflection, constructive and pragmatic, on the implementation of inclusive educational resources.The challenge of the “Art-Connection” project is to offer explicit teaching aids to encourage public and private organizations, production or training, to mobilize the creativity of each to meet the challenges of innovation, the ability to learn and to be open to differences, in a context of globalization and the intensified crossing of cultures."

Previous research has identified the importance of formal, informal and non-formal skills and the ability to promote transversal skills when entering the Creative and Cultural sectors. While the European Commission has identified the Creative and Cultural sectors as areas for investment, the development of skills often utilised by these sectors, such as communication, creativity, critical thinking and collaboration, are currently under developed as educational institutions across Europe are reducing, and in some cases eradicating, the teaching of humanities subjects which offer such transferable skills. There has been a significant focus placed upon the development of the 4C’s within the agenda of the European Commission, and as countries, such as the UK with their SHAPE agenda, begin to recognise the need for humanities as a means of developing such skills despite the lack of training in the area, this project provides innovative practice to support young people in developing these useful lifelong learning skills at a time when Creative and Cultural sectors are particularly difficult to enter. The sectors have been hit particularly hard by the current pandemic, damaging its resilience. This project seeks to utilise the skills of young people to rebuild and nurture the resilience of the creative and cultural sectors in the future. By responding to the need to bridge the gap between further education and employment in the Creative and Cultural sectors and the harsh reality of employment in the sectors where low wages, insecure contracts, and skill deficit that have been compounded by the devastating effects of Covid-19, the project seeks to aid the reopening and rebuilding of these sectors by assessing their future skills need and through a series of interactive education sessions up skill-young people to be the creative and cultural sector innovators and entrepreneurs of the future. In doing so, this project additionally addresses the problematic issues of diversity in the sectors by making the educational resources accessible through digital innovation which sees the replication of in person teaching online. Supported by the creation of a digital portfolio, CREATIVITY aims to assist young people and industry professionals in opening up dialogue about education and employment as a means of aiding a full recovery of the sectors. Working with 10 young people, 14 informal educators, higher education institutions and a range of industry professionals, the project seeks to provide a clear route from school through to employment for both young people and the industry. To do so, the project will conduct a detailed research analysis on the skills training of student and the predicted future needs of the sector. This will inform the creation of 10 digitally interactive education sessions and supporting teaching materials that will utilise performing and visual arts methods to develop key competencies. The validation of these competencies will be provide by the creation of a digital portfolio designed to be shared with future employer and educators. An evaluative report detailing best practice once a rigorous evaluation process has taken place will enable the continued development of the practice and relationships fostered in this project.The project anticipates the important development of key competencies in young people fostered by their engagement with creative education that will prepare them for future education and work in the creative sector. Additionally, through an inclusive approach to learning, the project seeks to diversify the sectors as a means of support the resilience and innovation of the workforce. The collaboration between young students, educators and industry will additionally strengthen the arts offering across Europe. The impact of this project is preserved through the open nature of the resources it produces. By offering access to education sessions delivered by practitioners and academics, the attainment of young people is better supported and a clear trajectory from education to employment is established. Long term, the young people and educators who take part in this research will utilise skills and learning for either further teaching in this area or professional employment. The Europe wide aspect of this project additionally creates an intercultural dialogue on the issues which will develop a robust understanding of the sectors and their needs for future generations.

Over the last decade, open, non-formal and informal learning pathways have been recognised at the centre of the European debate as a key component in achieving the objectives of the lifelong learning program. However, in many cases, people themselves may not be aware of the transversal and basic skills they are developing through such learning and the important role these can play in their competitiveness in the labor market. The CErTiFY project seeks to help individuals wanting to work in the Cultural and Creative sectors, considered to be a sector for investment by the European Commission, by developing and testing a new methodology based on digital tools for people to identify and recognise their transversal skills, as identified in the 2020 strategy. Indeed the characteristics of the Cultural and Creative sectors, with less-structured recruitment processes and key competencies often acquired over longer periods of time and outside the formal education system, mean that recognising such skills is essential both for candidates embarking on their early careers and adult population seeking to work in this sector but not able to find an appropriate position. The two digital tools which will be developed and tested as part of the project are: a smartphone application to create digital 'curricular' stories and an e-learning platform to support and guide job seekers in applying for jobs. Together these tools will help adults better align their competences with those in job descriptions, so that they become more confident and better placed to promote their professionalism.

"Eure.K has set itself the aim of producing a recommendation document based on experience developed during the course of the project on the procedures applied for recognizing, validating and certifying European key competences in the field of vocational training and adult education.Initiated in 2016, Eure.K thus conducted its studies concurrently with the development of the 2016 European Parliament and Council Recommendation revision that provides a Reference Framework on Key Competences for Lifelong Learning. The recommendation revision resulted in the new Recommendation of 22 May 2018 which advocates in particular “further developing the assessment and validation of key competences acquired in different settings (…)” (see § 3.3 of the recommendation) by an application of best practices. The Recommendation specifies in its annex that “different approaches to assessment of key competences in non-formal and informal contexts could be developed” (see Annex, C,c). The Eure.K project thus anticipated the new recommendation by providing the first contribution to the sharing of practices called for by the European Council. The Eure.K project has involved university professors and researchers (Lisbon and Algarve; Padua, Italy; Le Cnam, France), training organizations and networks (APap in France, Le Forem in Belgium), business training resource centre organizations (Politecnico Calzaturiero, Italy) and knowledge dissemination institutions (Istituto Sturzo). Each partner was involved in the development and analysis of one of these practices. Partners were also involved within the Steering Committee in a general reflection: the Committee thus operated as a collective player, members of the committee being collectively responsible for specific projects led by their colleagues. The diversity of member profiles within the Steering Committee was therefore a source of enrichment and a significant asset. The committee first examined the use of the European Reference Framework by actors and institutions working in the field of vocational and adult education. The framework cannot and should not be applied “mechanically”. On the contrary, starting from the actual context of actors and institutions, from the purposes they pursue and from the target audiences involved is necessary to understand the use of the reference Framework, even if this means amending it to fit the context.This is what the project undertook by conducting 10 “action-research” studies.Each partner within the consortium was involved in the implementation of schemes in the 4 countries represented in the project so as to give an account, taking their own specificities into consideration, of the use of the Reference Framework. Target groups varied from people with low levels of education but with a significant life experience to doctoral students. Implementation contexts were diverse, varying from the field of social inclusion to company or professional development contexts as well as formal training. Objectives of the schemes could be the empowerment of individuals through self-recognition of prior experience, employability, professional qualification or simply assigning a value to prior learning acquired from remarkable experiences.The project therefore provided to all actors and institutions concerned a restitution of unique experimentations which showed, based on the experimentations themselves, the multiple possible uses that can be made of the reference framework. Although it may be amended, supplemented or clarified, the framework nevertheless serves as a reference without imposing a normative “Framework”.By formalizing strengths and points of concern which emerged from the great variety of experiments, the project also contributed in a first sharing of findings. This is the subject of the document called the ""Memorandum"", in which six recommendations are thus set out. Its aim is to share with all the actors and institutions wishing to be involved in processes and schemes for the recognition, validation and certification of skills, the lessons learnt from the experimentations themselves as well as from their collective analysis. The recommendations are only valid within the scope of the 10 "" action-research "" studies. They simply have the ambition of being useful in the design and ""engineering"" phase of these schemes."