Metropolis – Linking Cultural Heritage to the Jobs of the Future Erasmus Project

Project Title

Metropolis – Linking Cultural Heritage to the Jobs of the Future

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 school education

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2018

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Labour market issues incl. career guidance / youth unemployment; Cultural heritage/European Year of Cultural Heritage; ICT – new technologies – digital competences

Project Summary

Metropolis looks to explore post-industrial areas in order to enthuse young people about the career opportunities which are developing in these locations. The need for such an approach can be seen in the fact that, following the decline of many traditional industries across Europe during the last half a century, countless urban areas have struggled to free themselves from an image of a stagnating location with poorly performing economies. Indeed, this decline, and the negative stereotypes which are generated by this, has come to define these locations. The problem is that such stereotypes usurp any previous positive associations, and so the population at large both forgets the success of the past and fails to acknowledge the potential for the future. This can have a particularly great impact on young people considering their options for further education and future careers. They have grown up since the decline set in, which means that they are all too quick to dismiss their local area as one with little going for it. As a result, they fail to properly understand the potential and opportunities which exist for career development and growth in the regeneration which many of these post-industrial locations are now starting to embrace.

The Metropolis project used the European Year of Cultural Heritage as a catalyst to begin to challenge these negative stereotypes found amongst young people around areas of industrial decline. This was done through an approach which both celebrates the impact of these locations’ rich industrial heritage and champions their regeneration. To achieve the project’s aims, Metropolis engaged with two main target groups; education and guidance professionals and the young people they work with. In terms of young people, the project developed resources for them to use independently which both provide a new, challenging dimension to their learning and helps them to better understand the potential local career options open to them in the future. Alongside this, the project developed support tools for education and guidance professionals which help to improve these practitioners’ skills and confidence when it comes to engaging with digital resources and promoting the local labour market. This have a positive impact on the quality of teaching, helping to improve the impact of guidance sessions on students’ overall aspirations and learning outcomes.

Partners harnessed digital advancements in the use of geo-mapping, to develop an interactive city map which allows young people to immerse themselves in their city in a way they never have before. This allowed stakeholders to engage with hidden aspects of industrial heritage, with this fresh perspective being used as an entry point into discussions around how an area’s industrial heritage is helping the local labour market to develop – either by building on the legacy of the past (e.g. through repurposing old brown field sites) or looking to harness traditional skills for new activities.

The project has produced an approach that can be used in a variety of cities across Europe, with each partner having used a local region as a test case to pilot the project. These interactive city maps are complemented by a series of offline resources, which add value to the learning process and make sure that project resources can be used in a variety of contexts. The experiences of developing these tools feed into a practitioner toolkit, which has been designed to allow advisors from across Europe to both make the most of the project’s outputs in their work with young people, and understand how they can develop similar resources in their own city.

The focus of project outputs is on positively engaging with urban landscapes as an educational resource, in order to highlight employment and skills opportunities. As a result, young people are more enthused about employment opportunities in their home regions and better informed to make career and education decisions aligned to the needs of the labour market. Consequently, the project should challenge stereotypes, address issues around brain drain, and help to curb the growing skills mismatches seen amongst young people.

Project Website

http://www.metropoliseu.com

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 337808 Eur

Project Coordinator

ASPIRE-IGEN GROUP LIMITED & Country: UK

Project Partners

• PANCYPRIOS POLITISTIKOS KAI EKPEDEFTIKOS SYNDESMOS “EVROPOLITISMOS”
• FRIEDRICH-ALEXANDER-UNIVERSITÄT ERLANGEN-NÜRNBERG
• Monceau-Fontaines
• CHY Consultancy Ltd
• CESIE