According to the OECD Responses to Coronavirus (2020) Cultural and Creative Sectors (CCS) are among the hardest hit by the COVID-19 pandemic with jobs at risk ranging from 0.8 to 5.5% of employment across OECD regions. The COVID-19 pandemic is especially hard for the arts and culture students who now have no clear picture of their professional future. At the same time, lecturers of CCS will need to be digitally skilled and confident to succeed in a rapidly changing environment and adapt to new and emerging technologies. Many art and culture lecturers are at loss with the new demands of social distancing due to their very hands-on teaching methods. In Digital Career Stories - Opening new career paths for arts and culture students (DICO) the project consortium consisting of five European HEIs (Turku University of Applied Sciences, University of Macerata, Staffordshire University, Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design and Technological University Dublin) have joined their expertise to develop and pilot together an online methodology of Digital Career Stories. The methodology will be used to support students’ professional growth, understanding and well-being through self-reflective assignments and sharing them with peers. The DICO objectives are: 1. Boosting arts, culture, and creative industry students’ resilience and belief in their future by inspiring them to rethink their possibilities and career strengths through digitally supported professional self-reflection. 2. Providing piloted and researched Digital Career Story method to the use of art and culture lecturers who traditionally work with concrete hands-on methods in intimate workshop environments. 3. Enabling internationalisation, networking and online skills of art and culture students through collaborative digital reflection and career story workshops in the time where traditional student exchange mobility is not possible. 4. Intensifying the collaboration of the participating educational organisations in the field of pedagogical art and media based online methods. The DICO consortium will develop and pilot innovative art-based methods in four Intellectual Outputs that together form the Digital Career Story methodology: writing reflective diary (O1), digital storytelling (O2), performative embodied identities (O3) and design thinking (O4). What has originally been implemented as a series of fully hands-on and face-to-face workshops will now be turned into online interactive learning process. In all HEIs the Digital Career Stories method is piloted with variety of Master’s Degree CCS students. The selected MA students come from Cultural and Media Entrepreneurship, Contemporary Contexts of Arts, Creative Design Management, Leadership programme, Creative Arts and Theatre, Cultural Heritage Management, Fine Art, Product Design, Jewellery Design and Fashion and Textile Design. The DICO project is targeting CCS students and their lecturers in partnering HEIs and beyond. The DICO project involves 140-200 students and 22-32 lecturers in participating organisations. During the dissemination phase DICO will reach to HEIs providing education to CCS, cultural organisations and employment services to familiarise them with the Digital Career Stories method. The innovative aspects of DICO are: 1. Transforming the Digital Career Story method to a fully digital online process 2. Offering international career-oriented experience for CCS students 3. Applying new innovative methods as part of Digital Career Story methodology 4. Combining various fields of art and design in same process (drama, media, service design, fine arts and cultural heritage) 5. Seeing career as a narrative, which can be guided and constructed. The main result of DICO is the methodology that adapts originally hands-on face-to-face process to digital version that can be fully implemented online. The results and experiences gained during DICO and the materials produced will be available after the project in the Toolkit (O5) for Digital Career Stories containing the following sections: 1. Digital Career Stories Methodology 2. Evaluation and development 3. Learning materials. Other significant expected results of DICO are: - Digital Career Stories produced - Adopted new methodology by lecturers teaching professional identity and providing career counselling - Improved professional self-esteem and better understanding of their learned skills by participating MA students - Improved digital skills of CCS lecturers in participating HEIs. The international online adaptation of the Digital Career Story method and the supporting toolkit with materials and recommendations enables the exploitation in other HEIs throughout Europe, since the implementation does not require any expensive platforms.
The project aimed at developing innovative arts-, storytelling- and design-based methods which would build students’ reflection and self-reflection skills, digital and creative skills, support their identity work and career planning, and adapt to both online teaching and in-class teaching, as well as to study and career counselling in higher education institutions. The objectives were: 1. Boosting arts, culture, and creative industry students’ resilience and belief in their future by inspiring them to rethink their possibilities and career strengths through digitally supported professional self-reflection. 2. Providing a piloted and researched DICO methodology to the use of arts and culture lecturers who traditionally work with concrete hands-on methods in intimate workshop environments. 3. Enabling internationalization and networking of arts and culture students, and simultaneously building their digital and online skills, in collaborative online and hybrid workshops focused on professional reflection through art-, storytelling- and design-based methods. 4. Intensifying the collaboration of the participating educational organisations in developing and adopting new arts, storytelling and design based methods for online teaching.
Cultural and Creative Sector (CCS) students face a challenging situation as they graduate and enter working life. Along with the tourism sector, CCS was among the most affected by the current Covid-19 pandemic. The CCS sector workforce faces high risks of unemployment and underemployment. Especially in the arts sector, income comes from many different sources, and careers are characterised by multiple short-term jobs, projects and assignments, freelancing and self-employment. Fragmented and unsecure working life requires flexibility, adaptability, resilience, lifelong learning and continuous professional self-reflection and identity work. Therefore, there is an increasing need in HEIs for new pedagogical approaches and learning methods that support self-reflection skills, professional identity work and career planning of students. Moreover, in the midst of Covid-19, HEI staff faced an urgent need to shift their teaching, tutoring and study and career counselling activities fully or partly to online environments. This required new digital skills and methods suitable for online learning and available digital platforms.