CONTEXT During the last years, an increased European interest in the potential of amateur arts and voluntary culture in fostering social inclusion can be witnessed. This is reflected in a range of publications and projects focussing on this interconnection (Cultural Heritage Counts for Europe report 2018; European Commission 2018; European Research Partnership on Cultural and Creative Spillovers 2019; Matarasso 2018; Culture Action Europe 2018). Based on this data, own research, and results of the former Erasmus+ project BRIDGING, the rationale behind this new project is that amateur arts and voluntary culture enhances social inclusion. Many learning providers in the field know for the potential of their work to support social inclusion. Yet, how this can be done and what categories and practical questions need to be considered when working on this objective is often unclear. OBJECTIVES The project BOOST aims at empowering learning providers in the sector of amateur arts and voluntary culture to contribute to social inclusion. It supports the self-reflection of learning providers on their potential for fostering social inclusion along different dimensions and categories in form of an online Benchmark Tool; and it provides practice-oriented options for learning providers in the field on how to develop an organisation’s level of social inclusion. ACTIVITIES The first output of the project will be a Baseline Survey on good practice of benchmarking and recommendations on social inclusion. It will be carried out by all partners on relevant studies, reports, and literature and with expert interviews and focus groups with selected learning providers in the sector. The second step will be to structure the outcomes of the Baseline Survey into main relevant areas. That means that they will be clustered and divided along main relevant issues, like: access to activity, content of activity, outcome of activity, etc. Each identified issue will furthermore be divided into concrete questions, that will help the learning providers to ask themselves how they are currently ensuring inclusive access to the activity, inclusive content of the activity, inclusive outcomes of the activity, etc. A transnational training on the Benchmark Tool will be a possibility to train the partner organisations in benchmarking in the civil society sector and reflect with experts on the tool and adapt it. The learning providers that will help to test and develop the Benchmark Tool further will also be involved in the development of the Practice Methods. The development of the Practice Methods will happen in teams of three project partners in the framework of trilateral meetings. Each team consists of two practice partners and one consulting partner as well as one identified learning provider. During a period of twelve months these teams will have time to develop, reflect, adapt, document and disseminate the Practice Methods. The Practice Methods are linked to the Benchmark Tool so that they can directly support an organisation’s development in social inclusion according to the result of its self-assessment. The Manual for the use of the Benchmark Tool and the Practice Methods will be developed based on the tests and the impact assessment. The impact assessment is led by a research-based partner in the consortium. In a first step, the partners will formulate recommendations and then create the Manual so that other learning providers can easily use the Benchmark Tool and the Practice Methods. The partner consortium will carry out a European Symposium in Krakow where external organisations and experts are invited to discuss the Benchmark Tool and the Practice Methods with the partner consortium in discussions and workshops. EXPECTED RESULTS AND IMPACTS The project aims at initiating a thorough quality development process in the sector. In the short-term perspective the project supports learning providers in their orientation and development towards a socially more inclusive work, including the initiation of new socially inclusive activities. By these means learning providers will be enabled to define their strategy and possible activities regarding social inclusion in detail. On the long-term, we expect the project’s information provision, awareness raising as well as new possibilities for further education regarding amateur arts and voluntary culture will inspire the learning providers in the sector to be more societally engaged and to raise their efforts in social inclusion. PARTICIPATING ORGANISATIONS The project consortium circle includes 6 partners from 5 countries in Northern, Eastern and Western Europe, that represent four strong national umbrellas as well as two knowledge and research centres, representing a transnational European sum of varied expertise and experiences in the field, which we cannot find in just one of the participating countries. The project partners share the responsibilities equally.
The project BOOST aims at empowering learning providers in the sector of amateur arts and voluntary culture to work more consciously and systematic with the added community values of their cultural activities. Until now, learning providers in the sector can use the many good practice examples in the cultural sector of our civil societies as support. However, it is difficult to find practice-oriented tools for a systematic assessment of own cultural activities and methods on how to concretely strengthen the added community values of their own work. This project proposal therefore departs from the state of the art in term of good practices and research in the field and attempts to go one step further by providing methods and tools that can support the self-reflection and bring applicable solutions for learning providers in the field of amateur arts, voluntary culture, and heritage.
During the last years, an increased European interest in the potential of amateur arts and voluntary culture in fostering added community values can be witnessed. This is reflected in a range of publications and projects focussing on this interconnection (Cultural Heritage Counts for Europe report 2018; European Commission 2018; European Research Partnership on Cultural and Creative Spillovers 2019; Matarasso 2018; Culture Action Europe 2018). Based on this data, own research, and results of our former Erasmus+ project BRIDGING, the rationale behind this new project is that amateur arts and voluntary culture provide added community values, like social inclusion, cohesion, and active citizenship. Until now, learning providers in the sector can find inspiration by many good practice examples, but there is not developed methodologies and tools on how to concretely implement and adapt the potential of added values to their own work.