Reinventing Mentoring in Arts Management Erasmus Project

Project Title

Reinventing Mentoring in Arts Management

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 higher education

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2020

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses; Creativity and culture; Overcoming skills mismatches (basic/transversal)

Project Summary

Cultural management MA programs are facing dualistic demands – on one hand, from potential
employers, such as art organizations, nonprofits and governmental institutions, for practical skills and
knowledge on the current practices of the art field; and on the other need for analytical skills, capacity
to be critical and make transformations. Those programs programs need to pay more and
careful attention to balance the academic content with current management tools in wide spectrum,
such as leading skills, accounting, communications and as well as policy development but also adding the multidiscplinary approach preparing student to adapt their skills and competences to many different professional scenarios. In the changing society, it is not enough to know the current practices and ways of doing work, as the work life is changing rapidly due to digitalization, globalization, and use of artificial intelligence in the fields of art and culture, It has become crucial for young professionals to enter the work life with already highly functional networks, field specific expertise and possession of key contacts, besides the
academic and transferable competencies.

The aim of the projects is to create a learning model that allows both development of analytical and
academic competences and capturing the current field practices and tools and influence agencies responsible for occupational profiling to highlight the importance of a Mentor as occupation and further advocate for its definition in other partner countries. The project partners will co-create a new comprehensive understanding of mentorship as a framework for professional life- long learning as well as part of academic education. The project will have its focus on how to establish and maintain a sustainable interaction between students, potential employers and field practitioners, simultaneously creating a model enabling lifelong learning. We aim to renew the understanding of mentoring, creating a novel way for “mentorage” that allow co-creation of knowledge. We aim to capture both the needs of practitioners to share their knowledge and this with the aim to be as accessible and comprehensive, simple experience of a mobile and PC app. The needs of students to learn the skills of current practices and gain support for their career building in the context of international (global) labour market are also in focus. The participants for the project activities will be students of cultural management programs (app 50) and practitioners (app 70) from arts and cultural fields in European context. The project creates new knowledge and skills for teachers and trainers (app 20) of the field; also arts and management curricula leaders and administrators (app 10); established practitioners of arts and cultural field i.e. leaders of arts organisations and cultural projects who are or will become mentors or internship partners for students, regional, national agencies responsible for quality in HEI and occupational profiling. Based on the pre project analysis we create workshops in all participating countries with involvement of students and practitioners to co-create further the model. We aim to capture both the specifies of cultural setting in addition to a more universal learning model development. In this stage,we shall use design and arts based methods for enabling and facilitating co-creation. A number of focus group and interviews with practitioners, educators, leaders, national agencies for education will take place in order to establish professional profile of Mentor in CCI and inform related policies in to make the profession of Mentor internationally recognisable and thus ease the transferability of CCI workforce across Europe.

The main outcomes of the projects are:
1) mentoring model that enables both career building support and development of practical knowledge and skills for students as well as allows lifelong learning for practitioners through mutually befitting interactions.
2) Interactive PC/mobile app guiding and informing stakeholder interested in becoming mentors that will also serve as matching platform between mentors and mentees.
3) Policy informing paper putting together suggestion for formulating professional standard and occupational profile of Mentor in CCI to be further disseminated across member states.
The projects outcomes will be integrated to the curriculum of participating HEI’s. In addition, the model and app will be made available in European context
through networks and open sharing platforms and other networks. Moreover, the results and of policy papers will be presented in academic journal and conferences for wider audiences.
The new model and app will be flexible to encounter the changes in society and labour markets, occurring, for example due to digitalization and use of artificial intelligence. It will be agile and the design of the model encourages constant reflection and updating dynamically.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 319999 Eur

Project Coordinator

Eesti Muusika- ja Teatriakadeemia & Country: EE

Project Partners

• Foundation NUKU
• Creative Mentorship
• UNIVERSIDAD DEL PAIS VASCO/ EUSKAL HERRIKO UNIBERTSITATEA
• UNIVERZITET UMETNOSTI U BEOGRADU
• UNIVERSITEIT ANTWERPEN
• LATVIJAS KULTURAS AKADEMIJA