Operating with open innovation principles, ekip will establish a partner and network-driven policy recommendation engine to continuously drive the formulation and adoption of policy development recommendations for Europe’s Cultural and Creative Industries (CCIs). This will result in support and guidance that strengthens the capacity for CCI-actors to engage in and contribute to complex innovation processes. The interplay between the projects activities will allow us to deliver two objectives – building the meta-network amongst ecosystems and developing the knowledge-based and participatory policy engine – which will come together in making the third objective – supporting the development for CCI-centered ecosystems – possible. The engine is designed to in three main phases (i.e. five steps) achieve this: -Assess needs for future R&I actions - List of defined policy areas together with a meta-network of networks covering all member states and the CCI diversity. -Mapping of needs CCIs; tech, invest, skill, regulation - Investigate prioritised policy areas looking broadly and across sectors, also focusing on recommendations that will (i) increase the CCIs’ readiness for green and digital transitions as well as for the rest of the economy and society. -Identify and propose key actions - Formulate policy recommendations, also giving practical guidelines of how to implement and track development in ecosystems. ekip brings together highly networked and diverse organisations with strong track-record in research, innovation, and policymaking for and with the CCIs. Beneficiaries from 12 countries with different social, cultural, and economic contexts. Leading universities with expertise on research and innovation in culture and creativity. Organisations with online data collection and analysis competences and visualisation skills. Specialised policy consulting companies and advisories will be linking practice, research, and innovation with policy development for the CCI.

"<< Background >>The Project Arts and Crafts Today meets the need for the professionalisation of young artists and designers, the issue which is at the heart of the concerns of European Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) of art and design. Although the creative sector generates nearly 30 million jobs worldwide and employs more people aged 15-29 than any other sector, graduates of the visual arts are experiencing difficulties in professional integration.In addition, artists and designers are expressing the interest in revaluing local know-how and to establish a dialogue with diverse actors, whether from a technical, a professional and cultural point of view. This is accompanied by an increased interest in the processes of production, the materiality of the works/creations/artworks, related to the specific intelligence of the hand.These orientations can be linked to the search for alternative modes of ecologically responsible production in a post-industrial era and are associated with a desire to rethink the relationship to the object in the era of the Anthropocene. These concerns fully echo those of Arts and Crafts, an English movement from the end of the 19th century, which is characterised by a desire to merge art with craft and can be considered as a source of design. A critical attitude towards concrete utopias linked to ecology, an assumed relationship to technique and craft, the blurring of the boundaries between art, decorative art and design are all questions that find a particular echo in art and design today.These approaches propose solutions to transform uses, lifestyles and representations in relation to the ecological emergency. Although artistic HEIs have become aware of these bifurcations, they still need to translate them into teaching/training programmes that prepare students for these new orientations.Thus, through this Arts and Crafts theme placed in the contemporary context, our project aims to propose new pedagogical methods to train artists and designers ready to enter the labour market, environmentally engaged, open to the world and valuing local cultures. This will be possible through new pedagogical tools allowing the acquisition of competences in a variety of know-hows, integrating an ecological approach and a capacity to collaborate with the actors of the professional world.The diversity and notoriety of the international partners allows us to build an innovative educational project that fully meets these needs. The project is led by the Laboratoire d'Expérimentations des Modernités of Esadse with its international partners:- Royal Academy of Fine Arts of Brussels, ArBA-EsA, Belgium- Academy of Art and Design Bratislava, VSVU, Slovakia- Faculty of Fine Arts of the University of Porto, FBAU.Porto, Portugal- School of Visual and Media Arts of the University of Quebec in Montreal, UQAM, Canada In addition, the project integrates a large number of associated partners: craftsmen, production and dissemination venues and a morrocan artistic HEI National Institute of Fine Arts of Tetouan.<< Objectives >>The project aims to develop new methodologies in artistic HEIs focusing on materiality, procedures, gestures as a way of experimentation and research and with a particular attention to eco-design topics. These methodologies will integrate the development and use of digital tools in the transmission of know-how in order to propose an appropriate balance between digital and physical contacts between actors. Digital technology is also part of a collaborative approach as a lever for exchanges between various actors and to accompany training in cooperation between artists, designers and craftsmen.These methodological goals aim to:- Explore the particular role of the artist as an actor of change, who places himself at the centre of societal issues, thus decompartmentalising and democratising art and design- To seek new modes of production, responding to ecological challenges (waste management, minimisation of waste, resource management, reorganisation of the way we produce)- To encourage innovation and a transformation of perceptions and uses through collaboration between craftsmen, designers and artists.The project thus responds to the two priorities of the Erasmus+ Programme. Its results aim at meeting the challenges of society by supporting the development of innovative programmes that focus on the needs of art and design students, raising true actors of the ecological transition.<< Implementation >>The project plans different kinds of activities divided into 4 work packages. They are conceived and implemented in order to carry out the collaborative work necessary for the production of the project results:- Arts and Crafts Today Edition: Manifesto ""For a new way of creating and inhabiting the world"" and research basis.- Pedagogical bifurcations: research-creation methodology- Collaborative Digital Space and the Arts and Crafts Today virtual exhibition.The project includes two training activities for staff and three learning, teaching and training activities with the participation of students. All activities involve actors from the professional world (craftsmen, production and distribution venues).> Staff training activities will focus on sharing teaching practices in line with the know-how of the territory. Harmonizing of these practices is necessary to reach sustainable results and will be integrated into the pedagogical practices of the HEIs.> Learning activities involving students will give them the opportunity to participate in experiments in an international context, allowing them to acquire, in addition to practical and theoretical knowledge, competencies in working with professional actors and intercultural communication skills. The implementation and observation of these activities involving students will allow the elaboration of recommendations that will be integrated in the edition Pedagogical bifurcations: methodology of research-creation. A theoretical seminar will be organised at the end of each learning or training activity. The activities will allow organizing filming sessions, documentation of the integration of local know-how into artistic pedagogy, feeding into the Arts&Crafts Aujourd'hui Collaborative Digital Space and Virtual Exhibition.Each activity will also be an opportunity to produce artistic works that will be exhibited during dissemination events, illustrating the project's purpose. The four dissemination events, part of a dissemination strategy, will be organised during the last phase of the project and will allow to disseminate the results and conclusions of the project widely and maximise its impact. Finally, the project foresees 4 transnational meetings and 9 follow-up meetings (virtual, hybrid or face-to-face), in order to ensure its smooth running and coordination.<< Results >>In order to respond to the identified needs, achieve the project goals and produce sustainable impacts, the partner HEIs have planned the production of the following results:>Arts and Crafts Today Edition: Manifesto ""For a new way of creating and inhabiting the world"". The edition re-examine the historical questions of the Arts and Crafts movement, demonstrating their relevance today and creating a common knowledge base for the actors of the project, but also for any other HEI that carries out pedagogical or research work in this field. The teachers will be able to rely on this theoretical base as a scientific resource to implement the pedagogy tested with the students in the framework of the project.>Digital edition ""Pedagogical bifurcations: new methods in higher artistic education"". The aim is to develop, test, improve and document innovative methods of arts education that can be implemented by the partner HEIs and other HEIs of arts and design. This methodology proposes an effective 'doing' approach to art and design research-creation for European HEIs of art and design.>Collaborative digital space, including the Arts & Crafts Today virtual exhibition. The space will illustrate and support the project's findings and the new innovative pedagogical methods proposed in this framework. It is also itself an experiment, as each participant is a creator, contributor and receiver. The aim is to promote the dissemination of knowledge through the sharing of experiences and to foster a new vision of interdisciplinarity and decompartmentalization. As a visual tool, this space will present, illustrate and promote the results of the project in higher education in arts and design.The first expected outcome of the project is the acquisition of new competencies for all the participants in the HEIs: students, technicians, teachers and administrative staff. The sustainability of the project will be ensured through the pedagogical, theoretical and technical competencies acquired by the teachers, especially during the workshops. On the other hand, the craftsmen associated with the project will be included in the creation process, ensuring the preservation of their know-how, but also obtaining a new perspective on their productions, resulting in stronger links between artistic HEIs and the professional world.Furthermore, the project develops an ability to understand local cultural contexts, an awareness of the opportunities and challenges of each territory, and an acceptance of these differences. It also encourages innovation through a critical approach to stereotypes, whether they are linked to a profession (know-how) or to a local context. These are the key faculties for training of artists and designers able to bring about social and ecological change.For the HEIs, the project will enable the acquisition of experience in setting up partnerships with economic actors, a new understanding of their economic realities (opportunities and risks), building stronger bridges between higher education and the professional world. It will provide knowledge on the opportunities offered by international cooperation in pedagogical engineering, preparing the ground for the development of new courses."

"With Covid-19, remote collaboration has become the new standard way of working, teaching and learning. Higher Education Institutions, being confronted with lock-down situations on very short notice, resorted to preexisting digital collaboration tools and service providers majorly coming from the IT oligopoly companies located in the Silicon Valley. Although well-known and used before the lock-down, these are made for productive collaboration and do not cover the needs of the creative sector. Thus, remote creative collaboration, its needs, possible tools and pitfalls, - require investigation and distinct attention. This is the topic of the Digital Tools for Creative Cooperation Project (DTCC), led by the Ecole supérieure d'art et design de Saint-Etienne (ESADSE), France, in partnership with Estonian Academy of Arts (EKA), Tallinn, Estonia, and University of Applied Sciences (HfG), Schwäbisch-Gmünd, Germany, all three partners having successfully collaborated in the past. The Project will involve students, teachers, technicians, members of the administrative staff of these three HEI and will aim to:- equip students, teachers and staff of the HEI in art and design with necessary skills and tools, creating future-proof conditions for digital creative cooperation - through the critical approach, raise awareness on the data treatment challenges, including data security and ecological threats. In order to achieve these goals, the consortium will:- Conduct exploratory research on digital practices in art and design HEI- Develop and test a series of web-based Collaborative Software Prototypes for the creative sector- Produce the ""New pedagogical online-offline realities in art and design"" publication- Create a Toolkit - Online platform and exhibitionThree intensive international workshops, milestones of the project, will be organised in order to engage and involve all the interested participants in the cooperation on the project. Through different stages, the participants will enhance their understanding of the issues linked to the project theme, acquire new technical and language skills, open up to different cultural environments, and grow capable of undertaking new challenging international projects. Several events will highlight the project results and allow reaching out to the larger audience. Organised at the end of the project, a conference and an exhibition during the Biennale Internationale Design Saint-Etienne 2023, IxDA Seminar in Tallinn or the International Seminar Week (ISW) in Schwäbisch-Gmünd will be perfect occasions to spread and disseminate the project results and share its best practices. Those will sustain after the end of the project thanks to the strong ties created between the students and the staff of the Partner Organisations. The online platform hosted by the means foreseen by ESADSE after the project will guarantee open access to the materials for the creative area professionals. The findings should be also applicable to other domains where creative processes can be found e.g. engineering, software or research collaborations. As a result, the project will provide an opportunity to significantly improve teaching quality and possibly create new teaching approaches in the context of art and design. Furthermore, exploring improved creative remote collaboration potentially can open up more intensive and fruitful cooperation between universities, national or international, especially in pandemic times that prevent people from meeting in person."