EPIC (ENTREPRENEURIAL OPPORTUNITIES WITHIN POPULAR CULTURE) Opportunities for Youth Erasmus Project

Project Title

EPIC (ENTREPRENEURIAL OPPORTUNITIES WITHIN POPULAR CULTURE) Opportunities for Youth

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : Strategic Partnerships for youth

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2018

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Entrepreneurial learning – entrepreneurship education; Creativity and culture; Youth (Participation, Youth Work, Youth Policy)

Project Summary

CONTEXT
The context of the project was high youth unemployment levels and disadvantage in the labour market, set against an increasingly dynamic pop culture, where culture, business and technology mix organically. Crucial competencies and support within enterprise education, youth work and mainstream education were compartmentalised in a way that did not reflect the dynamic, blended opportunities within pop culture. Youth workers excel at outreach and skills development, but partner research shows 76% currently don’t teach entrepreneurship or only do so in a limited way. On the other hand 68% of VET/enterprise development organizations in the UK’s NI Enterprise Network lack a training model aimed specifically at young people outside formal education. Enterprise trainers in our regions are generally inexperienced in working with disadvantaged youth, being tied into a framework where success is evaluated by business creation rather than entrepreneurial skills development. The context also included a very challenging environment for the project, for educators and for business with the advent of Covid 19.
The EPIC project set out to increase the the availability and quality of entrepreneurship education for young people from all backgrounds by developing a flexible and accessible set of resources that bridges the gaps identified and was easily adaptable to young people outside formal education. Partner organizations blended experience in youth work, entrepreneurship education and pedagogic expertise to come up with a set of resources that were tuned to the new reality of the post Covid environment and better serve young people outside formal education, where impacts from the pandemic were severe.
Pop culture is highly strategic choice of topic, being both accessible and actionable in our current economic situation. Before the Covid crisis pop culture phenomena were driving rapid tourism and digital enterprise. During the lockdowns a massive shift to activity online only emphasised an underlying trend towards digital pop culture, and we reflected this in our final set of resources, leveraging pop culture as a painless motivator and engagement tool to help young people develop their own entrepreneurial skills, finding alternative routes to professional and personal fulfilment..
ACTIVITIES
We created 3 intellectual outputs:
– A Resource Pack in English, Polish, Italian and Croatian for trainers, youth workers and educators. Explaining the relationship between pop culture and entrepreneurship, the opportunities available, the value of using of pop culture entrepreneurship as a path towards personal and professional development, motivating youth workers and stakeholders with practical guidance on how to introduce pop culture entrepreneurship education into their organizations.
– A Digital Resource Pack in English, Polish, Italian and Croatian. An attractive, convenient, usable set of innovative digital tools with clear guidance on which tools offer the best solutions to achieving pedagogical objectives.
– Accessible Open Education Resources in English, Polish, Italian and Croatian. A framework of 5 modules and a Trainers Manual for use in informal settings by youth and enterprise organisations. This framework delivers early stage pop culture entrepreneurship education in an adaptable way, with the option to extract sections or move in a sequential way through the material, depending on the setting, confidence and engagement levels of the young people involved. The materials are deliberately visual, multimedia and free of jargon. They offer different pathways into entrepreneurship that value and are tailored to the interests and culture of young people. Many of whom lack the family, financial or educational backgrounds that would enable them to be entrepreneurial in mainstream economies.
The multimedia resources are presented in image based Powerpoint, PDFs, ebooks and video for accessibility.
Throughout the development of the Intellectual Outputs we worked closely with youth workers and educators inside and outside the project partners to get feedback and to adapt the resources. This was particularly important as the Covid crisis unfolded and we responded by redrafting the intellectual outputs to emphasis emerging digital business opportunities.
We also:
– Adapted the resources and developed a week of digital training that delivered skills development and support to educators, VETs, Youth Workers and young people.
– Delivered a blend of online and physical events to motivate & guide youth, VET and enterprise organizations to introduce this new approach into their portfolio of services.
– Engaged 121 participants from youth work, VET, enterprise development and neet target groups in multipliers and 161 youth educators and VETs in evaluations of IOs.
– Logged 20,787 hits on the website in the final year of the project, 5,500 resource downloads, reach figures of over 252,000.

Project Website

https://www.epicopportunities.eu/

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 181622 Eur

Project Coordinator

Banbridge District Enterprises Ltd & Country: UK

Project Partners

• European E-learning Institute
• VisMedNet Association
• JourneyFree Ltd
• Akademia Humanistyczno-Ekonomiczna w Lodzi
• DUBROVACKA RAZVOJNA AGENCIJA DURA DOO ZA POSLOVANJE NEKRETNINAMA I USLUGE
• MOMENTUM MARKETING SERVICES LIMITED