Creative Lab : Access to Profession for persons with Handicap Erasmus Project

Project Title

Creative Lab : Access to Profession for persons with Handicap

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 vocational education and training

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2017

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Inclusion – equity; New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses; Access for disadvantaged

Project Summary

The CLAP HANDS project aim was to promote the professionalization of people with disabilities in the artistic and cultural professions, from an inclusive perspective, to identify barriers and share opportunities for improvement.

A first step was to collect a number of successful experiences in a guide of good practices. A second pillar of the project was the community created throughout the project by the organization of interdisciplinary groups in each country to bring together stakeholders: artists with or without disabilities, company directors, art and culture professionals, administrative and political, researchers, decision-makers, actors of education and training. These groups made it possible to explore all the dimensions of the theme of the project, to widely involve people with disabilities in the form of testimonies and to share the elements released to highlight the advances and requirements of each country. Another dimension of these groups was to define the skills required for professionals supporting the targeted people to identify potential professionals, better understand the obstacles and better define the possible paths for each person.

At the societal level we have seen that, despite the advances – especially legal ones – the inclusion process still requires changing the representations of most individuals. Making accessible, raise awareness, all inclusive actions in art and culture (works, shows, performances …) is a major condition for parents of disabled children, teachers, professional places (theater schools, fine arts…) consider it possible for people with disabilities to access these jobs and that the “ordinary” world finds this “normal”.

At the economic level, we have identified the difficult balance between all the aid systems which are attached to the recognition of the status of disabled person and the individual risk-taking to free up financial resources through his economically uncertain artistic work. Ordinary employment assistance and integration schemes are not always open to people with disabilities who were covered by specific schemes, which constitutes both special assistance and also a barrier to inclusion.

The consortium of project partners consisted of professional training and higher education organizations, as well as structures and networks that are already working on art and culture as a means of professionalization. We have reached our objective of building and testing a training module for professionals who supervise or support people with disabilities in order to help them professionalize in the artistic trades. This training was tested by each of the partners with different learners: social workers at the end of their training for France, in-service support professionals for Spain, professionals from a municipality in Sweden, humanities students for Portugal. Disabled artists were involved. The course can now be taken up by European vocational and professional training organizations.

A very rich work of academic research on the process of artistic professionalization completed the project and was the subject of a conference and numerous publications. It also promoted the awareness of territorial and regional administrative and policy makers about the improvements to be implemented.

All the partners of the consortium have already submitted new ERASMUS + projects to further develop these questions, and in particular to contribute to the concrete establishment of dedicated European networks.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 328439,93 Eur

Project Coordinator

FAIRE ECONOMIE SOCIALE ET SOLIDAIRE & Country: FR

Project Partners

• ARTISTAS DIVERSOS
• ADPEP34
• FORO TECNICO DE FORMACION SL
• STIFTELSEN KURSVERKSAMHETEN VID U-AUNIVERSITET
• PASSEPORT EUROPE
• COFAC COOPERATIVA DE FORMACAO E ANIMACAO CULTURAL CRL