Learn to Create - promoting Work-based Learning in Europe's Cultural and Creative Industries

Project summary

The overall aim of L2CREATE is to design, test and validate a new work-based learning (WBL) programme in Europe’s Creative and Cultural Industries (CCIs). It recognises that the modern, creative workplace is a powerful learning environment, with the potential to make vast contributions to employment, productivity and increasing economic competitiveness. The cultural and creative industries sector (CCI) whose social and economic contribution to the EU as well as its highly dynamic and transformative character in the digital era have been recognised by the European Commission highlighting it as one of Europe’s emerging industries. As a Strategic Partnership in the field of VET, L2C pursues its aims and objectives of developing a comprehensive and tailored approach to promote WBL in the CCI sector working directly with and providing specific support to companies and entrepreneurs from this sector and VET teachers and trainers. The specific objectives are: • To develop and provide a fresh and tailored conceptual model for effective WBL in CCI • To train VET teachers and trainers how to prepare learners (trainees, apprentices, internships) for effective WBL in CCI sectors, how to support them and how to link with the CCI employers sustainably. • To test the blended training programme for VET teachers and trainers in piloting countries to assure and actively promote its replicability beyond the consortium and across other EU countries. • To validate the learning progress of teachers and trainers. • To provide CCI employers with guidance on how to set-up, structure and support effective and beneficial WBL opportunities to learners. • To link with CCI clusters, to test an innovative mentoring programme for CCI employers on how to set-up and support high quality WBL with their limited resources and with the help of clusters and cluster managers. The CCI sector is characterised by a series of peculiarities that need to be taken into account and that result directly in specific needs of the target groups (VET teachers and CCI employers): - VET teachers and educators play a crucial role in assuring high quality in WBL, but in such dynamic sectors as the CCI, continuous professional development is important to assure that up-to-date support to learners and a robust sector specific link between education and the labour market is given. - The CCI sector is dominated by micro-enterprises, including freelancers, with limited financial, organisational and human capital. CCI employers need to be provided with better support on how to offer high quality WBL opportunities and how to support and manage them effectively within their limited resources. - The impact of globalisation is being increasingly felt in the CCI sector with businesses being involved in international value chains. This creates the need to better prepare VET teachers and educators how to equip students with a set of skills to enable them to work in an international environment. In the same sense, CCI employers and company tutors need to better be prepared for how to offer WBL opportunities for talented workforce that might come from across Europe. L2C partnership, representing 6 European countries is composed of organizations that together represent the three areas the project will match and connect: CCI specialists, VET organisations, and organisations experienced in designing innovative and creative apprenticeships and work based learning. L2C foresees the following results: - the development of training needs analysis and best practices focusing what VET educators miss in order to better promote WBL for CCI for the job market (IO1) - a validated training package (combining non formal learning and online learning) for VET Educators to foster their competences and skills on promotion of WBL in CCI (IO2 - IO3) - a manual for CCI professionals to better understand how to run WBL in their companies and how to increase the benefit for them - the development of a community of VET experts and creative professionals able to create connection and business/VET partnership during and after the project maximizing the mobility prospects and the impact - a guideline on how to perform the assessment and validation of what the target group learned thanks to the project and align it to European standards Ensuring that skills are modern, adaptable and relevant to the workplace is even more important for highly dynamic sectors such as the CCIs, where skills needs are so rapidly developing. Through its programme of innovation, embedded in strong links between the learners, the educational centres (formal and non-formal) and the companies and employers through a systemic work-based learning approach. L2C addresses the EU challenges of reducing youth unemployment and the adaptation of the current workforce to sustain and grow employment - ensuring that the developed skills of the workforce meet the needs of the future workplace.