Maximising Cultural Heritage: Educating and Growing Erasmus Project

Project Title

Maximising Cultural Heritage: Educating and Growing

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 adult education

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2018

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Cultural heritage/European Year of Cultural Heritage; ICT – new technologies – digital competences; Entrepreneurial learning – entrepreneurship education

Project Summary

The purpose of Maximising Cultural Heritage: Educating and Growing (MCHEG) is to maximise the social, economic and educational value of European cultural heritage. The project aims to do this through sharing best practices and using ICT to help business educators to grow the cultural sector and include a diverse and wide range of people in its development.

All the organisations in MCHEG are involved in educating individuals and organisations to start up and develop mainstream businesses, social enterprises, and other types of organisations through running classes, courses and workshops. All organisations believe business and social business has the power to help maximise the value of the cultural sector but must also be socially inclusive to do this.

MCHEG’s objectives were to:
– Share best practices around business and enterprise education for cultural heritage organisations and startups.
– Look at how cultural heritage can contribute to employment and economic growth and transfer strategies and learning for doing so.
– Consider and improve the use of ICT and its application by business and enterprise support organisations.
– Look at how we can support others to reach disadvantaged learners and people through ICT strategies.
– Increase partner’s capacity to operate at a transnational level, share and confront ideas and methods
– Look into how educators can help adult learners to start up and grow businesses in the cultural sector.
– Improve our use of ICT / digital learning to reach more learners and particularly the disadvantaged in doing this.

During the 12 months project there were three main steps in the project activities:
– Research and discussion in all the partners’ countries of business education to support cultural heritage.
– The 5 day training provides a learning platform for business educators to be better equiped to maximise cultural value.
– Dissemination of results

European cultural heritage has great economic and social value – its contribution to job creation, economic growth and social cohesion is well documented (Europe 2020). Materahub are an organisation that are leading in Europe in regard to boosting and transforming the cultural sector and demonstrating the value of European cultural heritage through their education programmes and in turn supporting job creation and economic growth. Along with others in Matera, they have transformed the city from poverty such that the city’s transformation through cultural heritage is sometimes known as ‘the miracle of Matera’. In 2019 Matera is the European Capital of Culture and this project aimed to take advantage of this high quality learning opportunity to piggyback on this wave of interest and allow Avilys and Red Ochre to learn from Materahub and also share their experiences the other way.

Together we learnt new participatory and intercultural approaches to heritage, saw examples of organisations that have benefited from effective business start up and development education in the sector and expanded our skills and competences. All of this meant the organisations involved – as educators themselves – are much better able to design and deliver courses, workshops and programmes for entrepreneurship and organisational education that works with cultural heritage in the future. On a scale of 1(not very)-5(very much), we found that:
– Everyone (6 very much) agreed that they had learnt best practices around maximising value through enterprise education.
– As a result of the project every single participant said that they had (9 people very much) learnt something new that will help learners to startup and grow businesses in the cultural sector in the future.

The added value of of the training was also that it allowed us:
– To upgrade our working methodologies, and make contacts with other realities across Europe. For example, the cultural heritage model canvass, mentoring circles, entrepreneurial circles, tips for communications in cultural heritage, marketing, how to engage learners through a long term 10 year vision and how to do it in small bite sized online offerings.

Eight out of nine rated themselves as 5 out of 5 (with one, four) for the extent to which the project has helped them to upgrade their working methodologies and that they can use in their own training and education work. Similarly, everyone said that they had learnt more (8 very much, one a lot) about how cultural heritage can contribute to employment and economic growth.

We found that the personal aspect of the programme was a revelation and allowed us to effectively share our practice together and make plans for future work. We have already shared results with an Indonesian social entrepreneurship centre, various national enterprise agencies in Lithuania, in social enterprise trainings in London and Matera and others are using our knowledge. We hope to work together again in the future.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 21870 Eur

Project Coordinator

Red Ochre Enterprises Ltd & Country: UK

Project Partners

• VsI “Neformalaus ugdymo namai”
• CONSORZIO MATERAHUB INDUSTRIE CULTURALI E CREATIVE