The Employment Package (2012) recognised the potential of entrepreneurship in contributing to a job-rich recovery, while the Entrepreneurship Action Plan 2020 highlights that universities should become more entrepreneurial, recommends promoting entrepreneurship education and to support groups that are under-represented among entrepreneurs. In addition, the European Parliament’s report on EU policy for cultural and creative industries (June 2016) recommends to the EC “the creation within HIE institutions of relevant joint programmes between arts & culture, business and technology for the development of work-learn trajectories”. Europe's cultural & creative industries (CCIs) offer a real potential to contribute to the EU 2020 strategy. Studies show that CCIs represent highly innovative companies with great economic potential and are one of EU's most dynamic sectors contributing around 4.5% to the EU GDP and providing quality jobs to around 3.8% of total workforce. CCIs are also important drivers of economic innovation in other sectors. At the crossroads of creativity and entrepreneurship, it remains difficult for CCIs to find creative arts graduates with a mix of creative and entrepreneurship skills to set-up companies. One of the main reasons for that is that HIE is not following in entrepreneurship´s footsteps. In fact, in the EU, only one-third of entrepreneurs have tertiary education (Eurostat 2014). You have more possibilities to become an entrepreneur if you don’t pursue university careers! There is clearly a lack of innovative entrepreneurship education for creative arts graduates throughout EU. A pan European investor network for the CCI (MEDIA DEALS), 4 universities with mixed teams from creative arts & business departments (EUC, UAB, UPV, UIC) and a SME focused on EdTech and on digital art (MYD), declare the ambition to create synergy of expertise and innovate through a specific targeted entrepreneurship methodology, supporting curricular materials and IT tools for faculties in cultural and creative arts fields so that once graduated, alumni will create their own businesses. 4ArtPreneur project wants to empower culture & creative arts faculties, deans, students, professors, professionals and policymakers so they become more permeable to the acquisition, validation and share of entrepreneurship skills aligned to the specific needs of the entrepreneurship world in the CCI. One of the most effective ways to introduce the entrepreneurship is through Project-Based Learning (PBL) and Student-Centered approaches. 4ArtPreneur will not tend to have a singular focus on students taking more business-oriented courses. It will tend towards the acquisition of INNOVATIVE THINKING competences needed for starting up the new type of CCIs SMEs that operate in a complex and fast-moving eco-system, where networking and experimenting are paramount. Teaching innovative thinking competences well beyond traditional business skills, exploring target group specific methods to simulate the business behaviours at the university; providing innovative digital tools to evidence the learned competencies for when the moment will come to face financiers, are new framework conditions that 4ArtPreneur will pursue. 4ArtPreneur develops next IOS: • An innovative methodology supported by several teaching & learning SYSTEM DYNAMICS materials. System dynamics models will put forward and simulate the behaviour of business cases suggested by partners and local working groups. The models will be used for computer simulation. • A modular ENTREPRENEURSHIP CURRICULUM, that will correspond to 3 ECTS credits, will be developed and integrated into the system dynamics methodology. The curriculum´s teaching & learning materials will be embedded into the system dynamics models that simulate the business cases/topics. • The adaptation & improvement of a European E-PORTFOLIO (IT tool) so that creative arts students can collect and show evidence of their entrepreneurial skills to confront future investment prospects. By identifying the entrepreneurial skills, a student has gained through his various experiences and how they relate to the business career he is interested in and by putting them in an easily understood e-portfolio format, will help him better articulate his skills when facing investment opportunities being offered while simultaneously alleviating investor fears and concerns. Training & face to face or blending learning implementation actions, one transnational and several local ones, will ensure that the project is not only FOR creative arts professors, students & alumni but also BY them. With 4ArtPreneur, professors, deans & policymakers will dispose of an adequate framework. Obviously, they can find already shaped entrepreneurship competencies frameworks. The difficulties come when they want to implement these non-specific frameworks to make creative arts degrees more permeable to entrepreneurial skills. 4ArtPreneur will provide it.
- Challenge students to develop an entrepreneurial mindset, help them understand the creative arts industry, and give them the skills to create their own businesses. - Promote excellence in teaching by making the professors & trainers capable to develop the employability & entrepreneurship skills of students. - Bridge the gap between the university and the labour market and help students and teachers connect with employers and financers.
Europe's cultural & creative industries (CCIs) offer a real potential to contribute to the EU 2020 Entrepreneur Action Plan: they represent highly innovative companies with great economic potential and are one of the EU's most dynamic sectors contributing around 4.5% to the EU GDP and providing quality jobs to around 3.8% of the total workforce. The 4ArtPreneur Project has created an innovative open-access online course on entrepreneurship addressed to faculties in cultural & creative industries, aiming to strengthen their skills and promote collaboration between arts and culture, business and technology. Specifically, the project responds to the following needs: - It remains difficult for the cultural and creative industries to find creative arts graduates with a mix of creative and entrepreneurial skills. - They need people who have business competences, who can mobilise financing opportunities, and who understand ICT. - When launching a product or service, creative arts entrepreneurs are sometimes excessively concentrated on the functional features of their new idea and not so much on the business approach. - There’s a lack of innovative entrepreneurship education adapted to the needs of creative arts graduates.