The Art of Employability Erasmus Project

Project Title

The Art of Employability

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 2019

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Entrepreneurial learning – entrepreneurship education; Creativity and culture; Labour market issues incl. career guidance / youth unemployment

Project Summary

ARTE – the Art of Employability wants to establish an innovative approach to tackle Mediterranean Europe’s youth unemployment crisis with social art. It combines classical fields of social work and entrepreneurship training with creative techniques from theatre and acting. Arte is a further development of the JobAct approach, developed by the lead partner over the last 13 years. In Social Arts, social work becomes an art and art becomes social work. We believe that we need an artistic approach to cope with the current social issues. Creativity, imagination and inspiration are the key skills to overcome the obstacles. The approach has proven very effective in bringing log-term unemployed people back into work in Germany and parts of Europe. So in this project we want to use it to empower unemployed young people in Mediterranean Europe to find jobs or self-employment, where actual figures still show a pressing need for innovative action. For this, we plan to apply the approach to the target group in question, improve it, helped by continuous evaluation, develop and disseminate transfer materials, based on a thorough stakeholder analysis with the aim to maximize dissemination. We combined 6 partners from Germany, Italy, Spain and Portugal with special expertise (art, social work, entrepreneurship training, research, evaluation, dissemination) and different levels of experience with this approach.

Heart and soul of the project are the (at least 5) pilot projects with the unemployed youth. Based on their combined experiences the partners will collaboratively conduct pilot projects with young unemployed people (min. 100 persons, combined), where they go through a minimum 6-weeks phase of theatre training 4 days a week, combined with job and entrepreneurship training one day a week. After the theatre play is staged in front of an audience, the second phase follows: Participants undertake a period of work experience, in which they apply their newly developed skills and self-esteem, closely supported by the program. By the end of the project, participants will have foster employability and transition into employment, self-employment or education. Through an intensive, immersive artistic experience, participants will develop personally and, at the same time, be guided through the difficult transition into work in a non-traditional way that has been proven to be very effective. Seemingly refreshingly unrelated to the difficult transition into employability, this experience in fact has a tangible impact on the competencies and characteristics needed to successfully navigate this transition. By working full time to stage a play, participants go on an art-facilitated journey of self-discovery and empowerment.

Starting point of the project is an initial staff training, where we combine all the skills needed for a mutual learning experience. After this, the project team will be able to organize and conduct pilot projects in high quality and contribute to evaluation and dissemination. Pilot projects start in the more experienced countries for the others to learn and are always accompanied by meetings in the beginning and the end to foster exchange of good practices, assist and help each other. The premiere of the play will be part of a multiplier event each (5 in total, 40 guests each) for the stakeholders to see the approach in action and be introduced to the transfer products we prepare. We will complement the already existing Tool Set for the method by a concept to develop the entrepreneurial mindset (IO1) that is especially needed in weak economies, a project diary in form of a blog and vlog to let people experience the process, the development of the participants in the process and the results themselves (IO2), an evaluation kit and results to ensure high quality of adoption (IO3) and a dissemination strategy kit to ensure maximum spread of the approach (IO4). At the end of the projects there will be another training to share all the knowledge generated in the project with key persons from the partner institutions (ca. 25), thus convincing them to become active promoters of the approach. Potential funding strategies are included, because their development marks a crucial step for the successful scaling of the new approach on a European level.

Main results of the project are transfer products that can be used by multipliers to organize social art projects with unemployed youth and by trainers to conduct them, and a European Network that includes organizations and stakeholders who share the vision of making art an education principle. With the help of the project, individual job chances for unemployed young people in the Mediterranean area are improved verifiably and institutions who work with these groups are given the opportunity to expand their curricula by an effective approach in high quality. By providing a dissemination strategy, the education principle can be spread widely in various fields of action.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 263032 Eur

Project Coordinator

Projektfabrik gGmbH & Country: DE

Project Partners

• VIVAIO PER L’INTRAPRENDENZA Associazione Promozione Sociale
• TECHNISCHE UNIVERSITAT DORTMUND
• SOCIAL INNOVATION FOR COMMUNITIES, UPSOCIAL SL
• Stone Soup Consulting Lda.
• Patchanka Società Cooperativa Sociale