As their first mission, HEIs have an obligation to the European talents and drivers of innovation to equip them with necessary skills for the future though relevant and practical education that employs and responds to real-life challenges. The project aimed to support HEIs to effectively assist the regeneration of the European CH sector in a highly digitalized post-COVID19 world by equipping the academic staff and educators with knowledge, skills and resources to engage with CH sector representatives in educational activities and organize problem-based learning interventions in multidisciplinary student teams.
The cultural and creative sectors were among the most severely impacted by the COVID19 pandemic. According to the estimates by Eurostat, the COVID-19 crisis may have affected about 7.3 million cultural and creative jobs across the EU, while jeopardizing the sustainability of hundreds of independent organizations in the long run. Specifically cultural heritage sectors dependent on the site visits, including museums, galleries, historic buildings, archaeology, events have suffered significant losses, despite being subsidized (CULT, 2021). It has instigated a rapid push to develop new digital models of customer engagement, which has proven to be a significant challenge for some players within the cultural heritage sector. COVID-19 highlighted existing inequalities between larger cultural heritage organizations and smaller players with lower potential to go digital, general lack of entrepreneurial capabilities to transform rigid traditional business models. Going forward, the recovery of the sector is expected to be similarly reliant on novel ways and models of attracting and retaining customers, where more entrepreneurial approaches and sustainable future business models that embrace digitalization are necessary for all type of CHOs.