To answer the employment objectives Horizon 2020 which cannot be fulfilled without contributing to a better access to employment for people with disabilities, CLAP aims to allow the development of professionalization of these people in artistic and cultural businesses, by an inclusive perspective. This project stems from the report that many artistic activities exist with these people but it is necessary to clear the conditions to go from creative occupation or leisure activity towards a professional exercise. This project is also going to confront, to get over it, the diversity of the societal and institutional approaches of the various states, in particular between member states of Southern Europe (Spain, France, Portugal) and Scandinavia (Sweden) having more inclusive practices. Thanks to a dedicated social network, as the support of the community working as a Creative Lab, created specifically for this project to create a community of experience exchange and to anchor the collaborative practices with the targeted professionals, CLAP will track down at a European level other professional practices of this type and the conditions of their success at various levels: economic, status of the disabled people, supervision or support of disabled people in these practices; training of the people supporting them. CLAP will clear the best practices, the criteria which allow to define the professionalization of the implemented activities or the people's routes. It will try to understand: -What contributes to the professionalization of disabled people -how these routes or the development of these activities were made possible or can be thanks to modifications of the "ordinary" business sector which knew how to handle the difficulties (accessibility,...) and/or thanks to appropriate measures of support. The consortium formed by vocational training and higher education organizations but also structures and networks already working in the art and cultural field as way of professionalization, will build a module of training for the professionals who supervise these activities or accompany disabled people towards these jobs, whether they are already committed to it, or whether they are considering it (preprofessionalization). This training will be experimented by each of the partners and the assessment which will be made will allow a distribution to national and international networks of training institutions in social work. To carry out this project, CLAP will collaboratively put to work in mediation studios towards the artistic job professionalization, all the big categories of actors concerned - artists, cultural organizers, financers, structures in the disabled field, training and research institutes. This shared reflection will support the practices favoring the occupational integration of disabled people in the arts and cultural business sector. These workshops will be held in each of the partner countries. At the same time, a social network will work which will allow capitalizing all the collected elements (best practices, professionalization courses and criteria, training projects by discussing them. Round trips between mediation workshops located in every country, and thus referred to the institutional contexts of these countries, and the productions and debates on the social network dedicated to the transnational level will be permanently fed. The dynamics of the project is supported by already existing partnerships between adapted companies working in the artistic businesses, ordinary entertainment and cultural structures, training centers in social work and research laboratories. The synergy of these actors in each of the territories will be fed and strengthened by the transnational contributions. It will contribute to create an European network structured on artistic professional practices of disabled people and will outline modes of action and professional qualification tools for disabled people in an inclusion approach.
The CLAP HANDS project aim was to promote the professionalization of people with disabilities in the artistic and cultural professions, from an inclusive perspective, to identify barriers and share opportunities for improvement. A first step was to collect a number of successful experiences in a guide of good practices. A second pillar of the project was the community created throughout the project by the organization of interdisciplinary groups in each country to bring together stakeholders: artists with or without disabilities, company directors, art and culture professionals, administrative and political, researchers, decision-makers, actors of education and training. These groups made it possible to explore all the dimensions of the theme of the project, to widely involve people with disabilities in the form of testimonies and to share the elements released to highlight the advances and requirements of each country. Another dimension of these groups was to define the skills required for professionals supporting the targeted people to identify potential professionals, better understand the obstacles and better define the possible paths for each person. At the societal level we have seen that, despite the advances – especially legal ones - the inclusion process still requires changing the representations of most individuals. Making accessible, raise awareness, all inclusive actions in art and culture (works, shows, performances ...) is a major condition for parents of disabled children, teachers, professional places (theater schools, fine arts…) consider it possible for people with disabilities to access these jobs and that the “ordinary” world finds this “normal”. At the economic level, we have identified the difficult balance between all the aid systems which are attached to the recognition of the status of disabled person and the individual risk-taking to free up financial resources through his economically uncertain artistic work. Ordinary employment assistance and integration schemes are not always open to people with disabilities who were covered by specific schemes, which constitutes both special assistance and also a barrier to inclusion. The consortium of project partners consisted of professional training and higher education organizations, as well as structures and networks that are already working on art and culture as a means of professionalization. We have reached our objective of building and testing a training module for professionals who supervise or support people with disabilities in order to help them professionalize in the artistic trades. This training was tested by each of the partners with different learners: social workers at the end of their training for France, in-service support professionals for Spain, professionals from a municipality in Sweden, humanities students for Portugal. Disabled artists were involved. The course can now be taken up by European vocational and professional training organizations. A very rich work of academic research on the process of artistic professionalization completed the project and was the subject of a conference and numerous publications. It also promoted the awareness of territorial and regional administrative and policy makers about the improvements to be implemented. All the partners of the consortium have already submitted new ERASMUS + projects to further develop these questions, and in particular to contribute to the concrete establishment of dedicated European networks.