The role of Arts Engagement in preventing and reducing poverty and social exclusion will see innovative capacity building and and volunteering actions, bringing together young people, youth arts workers and diverse communities in order to develop, plan and realize arts engagement activity that has tangible development and employment impacts.Across the world the arts make valuable and significant contributions to the social, cultural, economic and tourism development as well as supporting the needs of young people and the wider community. The cultural sector is a global creative industry and widely recognized as one of the fastest growing types of tourism. Our partners recognize that these aspect of intangible culture provide us with significant opportunities for young people, workers development and employment, supporting individual and group innovation and creativity, whilst promoting social inclusion and cultural diversity.Our partners from South Africa, Zambia, Brazil, India, Trinidad, Costa Rica, USA, Ghana and Cuba, will collaborate within capacity building training activities; arts engagement projects; cultural events; periods of voluntary service and professional networking that will have a measured and significant impact on their capabilities to operate and act within a global cultural sector. This project will engage professional practitioners who will facilitate and support the delivery of training and creative work with young people and workers from backgrounds of less opportunity as well as pass on valuable skills and knowledge in arts enterprise development, Project stages include:1: '1 day project 'kick off' meeting followed by 2 days of training for youth arts workers, followed by 1 day EVS pre- mobility training for young people and arts youth workers;2: Hosting and sending of European Voluntary Service including testing models for arts engagement;4. Dissemination/training event with seminars for capacity building of youth arts workers and youth. The arts sector is a growth cluster for economic activity with the potential for combating unemployment increasingly recognized. Our project will compliment the importance of culture and community development as a contribution to the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals. Through building the skills, knowledge, experience and competences of our partners and project participant’s we enhance their capacity to develop employment and operate within a global arts and cultural festival sector. Objectives: Explore compare and contrast models of best practice in arts engagement in all partner countries;Enable workers and young people to develop volunteering initiatives within the cultural sector;Gain new competences and experiences of arts engagement management; Engage young people in decision making and delivery of community arts events;Provide opportunities for capacity building for workers and young people in wider community environments

"The project focuses on a specific area of higher music education within the jazz genre, larger jazz ensembles. At the same time, it aims at establishing better links between jazz education and working life.Ensemble training is increasingly seen as an important pedagogical tool for the training of transversal skills vital for the musician in the 21st century: team working, peer-learning and reflective practice are essential principles, which will support musicians to prepare themselves to be reflective practitioners in their future portfolio careers. It is an important objective to explore the didactic possibilities of working with large ensembles in an educational context in jazz performance study programmes, just as different formats of large ensembles play a very important role in music education within the classical music genre. At the same time, it is important to revitalize the large jazz ensemble format by challenging the traditional big band format. The financial challenges classical and jazz ensembles and institutions are facing creates a window of opportunity for innovation when it comes to the music itself as well as the relationship between the various stakeholders and the audience.The project will lay the groundwork for the provision of a sustainable platform for mobility an learning that doesn’t exist today . The project will also develop study programmes for conductors for large ensembles within the jazz genre. This is relevant both for dedicated jazz ensembles and for the many classical ensembles (eg symphony orchestras) that let different forms of ""rhythmic repertoire"" become an increasingly larger part of their activities. As far as the involved project partners know, there is no conductor education aimed at this type of repertoire anywhere in the world.The objectives of the project is to:- Establish sustainable collaboration between the partners in the areas developed through the project- Explore new didactic opportunities and methodologies through work with large jazz ensembles in the education of future jazz musicians- Explore and establish relevant blended learning methods for future collaboration between the partners- Develop closer collaboration between jazz education and the labour market, represented by important jazz festivals, in order to improve working life relevance of the education and the students' entrepreneurial skills.- Develop new repertoire for large jazz ensembles- Contribute to the revitalization of the role large jazz ensembles have on the professional music and art scene- Develop and launch specialized conductor education aimed at jazz and other rhythmic genres.During the project the following number of persons will be directly involved:-100 jazz performance students involved in Intensive Programmes -10 conductor students Intensive Programmes -5 teachers from higher music education and 5 managers/producers from jazz festivals in Working Group 1. -5 teachers from higher music education in Working group 2-10 leaders/managers from higher music education institutions and jazz festivals in the steering group-Administrative and support staff in all partner institutions. The objectives of the project will be achieved through a combination of several activities, two working groups that will work with specific topics and several intensive programmes for students and teachers, exploring and developing new methodologies and new music for large jazz ensembles.The results of the project will be presented on the project's web site and in a conference at the end of the project. The musical result will also be presented by student ensembles participating in the project at five concerts at five different European jazz festivals.The consortium behind the project believes the project has the potential to lead to significant development of methods and content in jazz education at all educational levels in the partner institutions and in other higher music education institutions"