As modern societies and economies are changing due to, amongst others, globalisation and technological progress, they rely heavily on highly educated and competent people. Key competences for personal development, employability, active citizenship and social inclusion for growth, employment and participation in society is a crucial theme of the European Education Area. Rural areas as an opportunity for the development of basic skills and key competences is a constituent part of European agenda for the implementation of the Education and Training 2020 strategic framework in the field of adult education. Its contents refer to several priority fields of the renewed EU Agenda for Adult Learning with special emphasis on providing opportunities for adults to develop all forms of basic skills and key competences, intensifying intergenerational cooperation and partnerships at local level, in this particular case in a rural area.The Legends project seeks to develop and implement a methodology for obtaining key compences by exploring intagible heritage - traditional myths and legends in Europe. It addresses adults in rural and remote areas to involve learners with geographical, economic and cultural barriers for learning. The project offers a completely innovative methods and contents by bridging traditional myths and legends with adults’ key competence development. There is striking interest in the myths and legends today thans to their influences in the contemporary culture. E.g. references to Norse mythology became common in science fiction and fantasy literature, role-playing games, and eventually other cultural products such as Japanese manga and the Marvel universe. Over the last 12 or so years, bestselling children’s and young adult authors Joanne Harris and Francesca Simon have written novels with Norse mythic themes. Even Game of Thrones’ icy world beyond the Wall, with its Three-Eyed Raven and White Walkers, riffs on Odin and the frost-giants.In the Legends project the cultural and European heritage linked to myths and legends will take shape in learning material and will continue to express their values through the process of contextualization of the messages inherent in each reading with the specific learning themes with which each legend will have a particular harmony. There are four main archetypes or models of simple story form, that will be refered within the project methodology to key competences:•Heroes and legends – stories about heroic actions. These stories are the heart of mythology through which important cultural values and practices are passed on. Concerned key competence: Active citizenship •Making discoveries – stories of the process that led to an important discovery. These stories guide others toward making their own discoveries or inventing new or better ways of doing things. Concerned key competence: Entrepreneurship•Personal change – tales about self-discovery and personal revelations. These stories are particularly helpful when teaching about how our actions have an impact on others. Concerned key competence: Interpersonal skills, and the ability to adopt new competences•Lessons learned – stories that describe failures and successes, allowing others to avoid mistakes or reach a successful outcome. Concerned key competence: Cultural awareness and expressionThe overall aim of the project is to develop adult learners’ relevant 21st century skills (active citizenship, entrepreneurship, interpersonal skills, and the ability to adopt new competences, cultural awareness and expression, digital and technology-based competences) and foster the learners’ knowledge of the rich European cultural heritage and its values by applying innovative learning approaches and materials consequently improving people’s education level and bringing them closer to cultural heritage, history and the common values of Europe, enhancing their overall development and employability.Legends specific objectives focus on:•Exploring European cultural heritage, such as myths and legends, and their contextualization as cultural and behavioral models to support the learning process and key competence development•Designing and testing a training program for key competence development•Developing “Legend of today” - a story-based digital interactive educational product based on gamification approach with materials and tools to gain core competences and life skills, and to develop learners digital and technology-based competences.Legends project builds its methodology on experiences of 5 partner organisations in adult education and training, and creativity and digitalization of education, and will produce and disseminate at EU level intellectual outputs that will significantly contribute to the innovation of the adult sector in partner countries and beyond.

According to Entrepreneurship 2020 Action Plan of EC investing in entrepreneurship education should be a priority in EU, therefore there is an imminent need opening paths into entrepreneurship also for groups that are underrepresented among business actors, such as those living in geographical isolation or in less developed rural areas, who need to be empowered to be able to use their creative and innovative capacities. Beside the sector-specific competency, there are skills deeply intertwined with starting new enterprises: essential skills to setting goals, to develop and refine a new or existing business model that helps the business achieve its growth potential. The skills for understanding the enterprise business model is vital especially for people living in rural, geographically isolated areas where the difficulties of creating a viable business are more complex than for other entrepreneurs. They tend to have greater problems in accessing high quality and tailor-made trainings.The LiveCanvas project aimed to develop key entrepreneurial competences of entrepreneurs, start-ups and unemployed adults from rural areas in order to be able to deliver high quality products and services and to create and manage businesses in a sustainable manner.The project objectives included:•exploring Business Models of rural micro businesses in Europe and converting them into training tool while celebrating their innovation stories•developing and testing a training program for innovative business and transversal skills •developing practical and hands-on training methods and materials to assure rapid acquisition and long-term retention of core skills for developing new products and services, innovation practices and modern entrepreneurial techniques•developing and testing an online learning space for providing a learning environment for active or new in rural areas•contributing to integration of innovative entrepreneurial skills training into European curricula. Project activities have been implemented by a consortium of 6 partners from 6 EU countries (SE, RO, NL, ES, PT, , BGa) all having significant and complementary expertise in the field of entrepreneurial training, as well as competences in European project management. These objectives were achieved through:•Complex research study on training needs in key entrepreneurial competences of entrepreneurs, startups or those planning to run own business in rural areas.•Selection of active micro businesses from rural areas, and elaboration of their business models using Business Model Canvas (BMC) as the practical background for the LiveCanvas training tools, highlighting the set of skills most needed to sustainably lead entrepreneurial activities.•Research result and the analysis of the developed BMCs of businesses led to the development of the LIVECANVAS Curriculum, including 6 learning units, describing objectives, themes, methodological indications and learning outcomes. •Developing LiveCanvas educational multimedia product, which teaches business modelling by telling the stories of small businesses in rural areas in partner countries, the challenges they meet, and the key factors for their success and sustainability•Developing multimedia training materials to support the new curriculum suitable both for classroom based and online, individual learning•High quality, multidevice online learning space developed with multimedia training materials, offering a structured learning experience for autonomous learners •New Curriculum and educational tools, training materials and learning space validated by trainers from partner organisations (C1) and later successfully piloted in the partner countries by adult learners •Implementation of quality plan, evaluation strategy•Implementation of a dissemination and social media strategy •Design, hosting and maintenance of LiveCanvas multilingual, multidevice websiteThe primary target group of the project were active or future entrepreneurs. The project has increased their access to open and high quality training and has improved key entrepreneurial skills. 11 trainers participated in the transnational training session, 80 persons participated in pilot training; and over 8.000 unique visitors have accessed the project webpage and online learning space, available free of charge. Adult trainers and education providers as secondary target group, as well as stakeholders have been presented the LIVECANVAS products in the various LiveCanvas multiplier events in partner countries (total 180 participants). The LiveCanvas Recommendation paper provides guidelines for further use of the project outcomes and use of the LiveCanvas (bridging business modeling canvas with digital storytelling for entrepreneurial training) approach by training organisations focusing on various target groups to boost the transferability of LIVECANVAS to other educational entities and European countries.

Artificial intelligence (AI) has become an area of strategic importance and a key driver of economic development in EU. It can bring solutions to many societal, humanitarian or environmental challenges from treating diseases (today AI is used to find a cure to Covid-19, the greatest medical challenge of the century), predicting floods to anticipating cybersecurity threats etc. One of the main challenges for the EU to be competitive is to ensure the take-up of AI technology across its economy.Entrepreneurship and AI go together in today’s business ecosystem. AI has proven to be an effective tool for implementing business strategies. On various scales (micro businesses or SMEs) with the help of AI, companies can improve customer experience, increase employee performance and develop intelligent agents to help with a lot of repetitive processes.AI became a key important engine to optimise business operations and the better understanding and usage of AI would be beneficial for businesses by significantly boosting their performance.However among European micro businesses and SMEs AI seems to show a slow uptake driven by a lack of misconceptions on the role of AI in increasing business processes performance, by lack of relevant skills, non-technical and “digital business” competences including. (Coordinated Plan on AI, EC, 2018; AI in Swedish Business and Society, Vinnova, 2018)In this frame it is indisputable that the European approach to AI needs to be underpinned by a strong focus on skills development so that everyone in EU can benefit from the green and digital transformations of the EU economy (White Paper on AI, 2020).Developing the skills necessary to have the right AI mindset and upskilling the workforce to become fit for the AI-led transformation is a priority of the EU and it needs to be widely integrated into European curricula, including VET - sector of key strategic importance to EU.In this frame, PERFORM-AI contributes to meeting the above EU needs and priorities especially aiming to encourage entrepreneurial spirit towards the uptake of AI in businesses and conveying the right understanding on AI essentials and strategic perspectives through the achievement of new entrepreneurial skills and competences crucial to embrace AI as part of an effective transformative toolkit in the European economy. With a focus on the organizational and business process management related implications of AI usage within companies, rather than on their technical aspects, PERFORM-AI provides for the first time VET training to build the knowledge and confidence target groups need to pioneer AI’s successful integration in micro companies, SMEs.Project objectives are:• Exploring real world AI use-cases and use them for educational purposes• Developing a diagnostic tool to assess the impact of adopting AI in businesses• Designing and testing an entry level VET training program to develop new, non-technical skills needed for AI readiness in a business context• Developing innovative training materials and high quality OERs for the target group to support them in understanding the ways adopting AI enhance business performanceTarget groups:- Primary: VET learners - future entrepreneurs, employees - with main focus on those from Business Management&Administration, Economics, Business Informatics, Mechatronics and STEM - Secondary: Teacher/trainers providing VET training for entrepreneurship, VET organis.PERFORM-AI Intellectual Outputs:O1- Collection of real world cases: Case studies& digital stories of micro businesses and SMEs adopting AIO2 - PERFORM-AI Diagnostic Tool: Map the business’ potential benefit domains from AI use O3 - PERFORM-AI VET Curriculum “Enhance Business Performance with AI”O4 - PERFORM-AI Training KitO5 - PERFORM-AI Learning HubThe partnership, 7 organisations from SE, RO, ES, NL, FI, DK - highly motivated in developing, testing and sustaining the project outputs, highly experienced and with complementary expertise - will engage, share knowledge and experience with 39 institutions as ‘organisations of interest’, to be involved during implementation and dissemination events. 90 Targeted VET learners will benefit from the local trainings using the PERFORM-AI training tools; 24 experts/trainers from partner countries will be directly involved in the validation process of various outcomes; 12 trainers will take part in the short-term transnational staff training testing and validating the PERFORM-AI curriculum. The PERFORM-AI outcomes and results will directly reach more than 700 persons (target groups, stakeholders) via project activities, multiplier events, leading to a strong base for long term exploitation. The online PERFORM-AI Learning Hub will be sustained for at least 5 years and be widely promoted to VET training providers and beyond. We are truly convinced the PERFORM-AI curricula and training tools will be core part of the training offer of organisations involved in the project.

<< Objectives >>C-TOUR proposes to design, develop and test a new VET pedagogy in order to equip targeted VET learners (including the active and/or future workforce and aspiring entrepreneurs in small tourism) with future-oriented skills crucial for circular economy thinking and support them to become actors of change towards circular, green transitions in the small tourism sector.<< Implementation >>• Showcase real-world small circular tourism practices, and use them as highly inspirational and motivational VET training tools to offer easy understanding on circularity in small tourism • Develop and validate a VET Curriculum along with high-quality multimedia tools covering competence areas crucial for a circular tourism mindset • Design, develop, test and promote open, original, highly innovative and effective digital training resources to educate about circularity<< Results >>Highly inspirational and motivational C-TOUR digital stories of small circular tourism practices promoting circularity in small tourism C-TOUR ReSOLVE ACTION e-DATABASE of circular projects applicable in the small tourism sector providing easy understanding on circularity New C-TOUR VET Curriculum and high-quality explainer videos training circular tourism skillsC-TOUR LEARNING LAB – open online platform with multimedia content modules offering a structured and engaging learning experience

Well-being in our society can no longer be based on overconsumption of natural resources. To maintain viable businesses, we need new solutions to ensure that materials and their value circulate in our society for as long as possible and loss and waste are kept to a minimum. The 2017 EU Consensus on Development identifies circular economy (CE) as priority area that contributes to the transformation to sustainable and resilient societies in the EU. With Agenda 2030 EU member states commit to using natural resources more efficiently and implementing sustainable production methods and ways of consumption. The EU CE Package (2018) sets ambitious goals for 2030 which involve systemic change on all levels of the society creating the urgent need for circular entrepreneurial mindset of all its actors including those underrepresented among business founders - low skilled, low qualified young adults - who need to be enabled to use their creative and innovative potentials.Micro, family firms are the driving force for empowerment of young adults - active or future entrepreneurs. To apply CE to micro firms, start-ups, active or future entrepreneurs need new skills for circular thinking. To implement CE micro enterprises often need new business models. Main changes include different products or services, different (relationships with) customers, different production processes and revenue models. Managing these changes requires entrepreneurs to understand: the logic by which a circular enterprise creates and delivers shared or multiple value to customers (Porter & Kramer, 2011); what does this new way of thinking mean for the business community; how can profitable business models be combined with social and environmental responsibility; how can they design products right from the beginning, and do things better, instead of just less bad. The skills to understand the circular business model are essential for low-skilled/low-qualified people for whom creating and running viable (circular) business is significantly more challenging than for others. They have difficulties accessing affordable high quality entrepreneurial trainings and lack education tailored to their specific needs in the field of CE. LiveCircularCanvas addresses the above challenges and contributes to achievement of EU priorities by developing key entrepreneurial skills of low-skilled, low-qualified, unemployed young adults (active or future entrepreneurs) in order to be able to design circular products and services and to create and run their businesses while getting more value out of less.Its objectives focus on: • Exploring circular business models through digital success stories of circular enterprises in EU, and using them as highly innovative training tools• Designing and testing a new training program for key entrepreneurial skills for circular thinking• Developing practical, interactive, highly educational training methods, materials and tools to gain core skills for circular entrepreneurial techniques• Developing and maintaining high quality OER providing open and innovative learning environment for the target groupThe core target groups are:1. Low-skilled, low-qualified, unemployed young adults (active or future entrepreneurs, start-ups) 2. Adult education providers Intellectual outputs:1. 'Circular Doing and Thinking’ - Real-life Stories2. Circular Business Models of Entrepreneurial Practices (CBMCs)3. ‘Circular Thinking Goes Digital’ - Digital Stories of Successful Entrepreneurs4. Curriculum for 'Circular Thinking in Action' Training Program5. LiveCircularCanvas Digital Educational Product6. LiveCircularCanvas Digital Learning HubThe consortium consist of 6 partners from SE, RO, NL, ES, DK, CZ highly motivated in designing, testing and sustaining the project outputs, with complementary expertise and highly experienced in the project topics. The project will also engage, share knowledge and experience with other 34 institutions as ‘organisations of interest’, to be involved during implementation and dissemination events.A total of 75 young adults will benefit the pilot workshops using the LiveCircularCanvas educational tools; 28 experts/trainers from partner countries will be directly involved in the validation process of various outcomes; 10 adult trainers will take part in the short-term transnational staff training testing and validating the LiveCircularCanvas curriculum. The LiveCircularCanvas outcomes and results will directly reach at least 600 persons (targeted adults and experts/adult trainers, stakeholders) via project activities, multiplier events, creating a very strong base for long term exploitation. We are strongly convinced that the LiveCircularCanvas educational product and tools will be core part of the training offer of organisations involved in the project. The Digital Learning Hub will be sustained for a min of 5 years and be largely promoted among adult education communities and beyond.